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CQEmiGHT DEPOSm 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 



BOTTLED UP IN 
BELGIUM 

THE LAST DELEGATE'S 
INFORMAL STORY 



BY 
ARTHUR BARTLETT MAURICE 

Author of "The New York of the Novelists," etc. 




NEW YORK 
MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 

191T 



9^ 



-^v 



Copyright, 1917, by 
MOFFAT. YARD AND COMPANY 

Published, October 1917 



OCT 31 1917 



0>CI.A476885 

• 



CONTENTS 



PAST I. GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Bottle Visions 3 

II A War Time Crossing — Shipboard Spy 

Mania — Falmouth and London , . 8 

III Running the Mine Fields — Rotterdam 

— Belgians in Holland — The Wire . 18 

IV First Brussels Impressions — The Invad- 

ers — German Soldiers — The Men of 
THE C.R.B. — Clocks, Restaurants, and 
Theaters 28 

V "For God, for Country, and for Yale !" 44 



PART TWO. INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

I The Commission and Its Chief — The 
C;N. — Motor Cars — The Agglomera- 
tion — The Sleuths — The Dock Of- 
fice — Staging the Comedy .... 53 

II German Officers 78 

III More German Officers 95 

IV Beyond the Magic Door — War Books 

AND Others — The Old Affiches . . 104 

V Louvain: Thirty Months Later . .116 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VI "To Understand Germany" .... 124 
VII Under the Yoke — The "Libre Bel- 

GIQUE"- — ViLLALOBAR ThE CoMING OF 

THE Dons — Discretion 138 

PART THREE. GETTING OUT OF THE 
BOTTLE 

I A Paris Memory 157 

II Last Days in Brussels — The Changing 

City 161 

III Departure — The Rhine — The Black 

Forest 174 

IV France — The Starry Banner — Yarns of 

Paris 183 

V Homeward Bound 195 



PART I 
GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 



BOTTLED UP IN 
BELGIUM 



BOTTLE VISIONS 

THERE have been times when I 
thought that the people who have been 
at home have been the ones who have seen 
things and experienced emotions. There 
were days in February and March, 1917, 
when the men in Belgium had a sense of 
being far away from the real march of 
events. For the thrills they had to depend 
upon the meager bits of news that leaked in. 
They brought blazing visions. Across the 
Atlantic, in the streets, the newsboys were 

8 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

crying the extras. The flag was being un- 
rolled at every window. In the theaters the 
audiences were rising to the first bars of the 
National Anthem. Platform orators were 
hailing a land united, "From the rockbound 
coast of Maine to the Everglades of Flor- 
ida." We could not sing The Star 
Spangled Banner or cheer for the flag. We 
were only shut up in the Bottle, a highly 
charged electric wire to the North, the 
battling armies to the South, the forbidden 
land of mihtary operations to the West, and 
to the East — Germany! We wondered 
just what day the crash was coming and 
what it was going to bring. "We may all be 
hanged yet — or shot," said the Director, in a 
moment of smiling geniality. Brand Whit- 
lock said that the situation reminded him 
of the old farmer in the Middle West whose 
wife had been long bedridden. "I do hope," 
he said, "that she gets well — or some- 

4 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

thing!" We speculated about our chances 
of eventual refuge in friendlier surround- 
ings. We compared notes of what we had 
heard of the comforts and discomforts of 
the various prison camps. Sometimes, in 
moments of American flippancy, we made 
bets about our destination. Promises of 
safe conduct were in the bond, they were 
even in writing, but somehow we had lost 
confidence in scraps of paper. 

It was understood that in entering the 
American Service for Relief in Belgium, a 
delegate was to write nothing about the con- 
ditions of that country resulting from the 
actions of the occupying military authorities 
until six months after the expiration of the 
war. I do not know whether that condi- 
tion still holds, but I am assuming that it 
does. So I am leaving for others, of longer 
service and far wider experience, to tell, 
when they see fit, of the friction and strife, 

5 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

of the land under the yoke, of how the 
chomeurs looked when they went away, and 
how they looked when they came back, of 
what happened to the men and women of 
Virton. This is merely a superficial story, 
written as lightly as the grim subject will 
allow. 

But if the more terrible side of things as 
they are in the stricken land is not to be told 
in detail, the haunting memory of it must 
endure. Never to be forgotten was the 
coming of the trains with their ghastly bur- 
den ; the remnants of men dropping from the 
opened cars to the ground, the faces like 
those faces we saw in hideous photographs 
showing the victims of the crimes of the 
Congo and Puju Mayo. Never to be for- 
gotten the wailing of heart stricken 
women : "Oh ! My husband ! My son ! My 
brother!" or the officers of his Imperial Maj- 
esty Wilhelm II, lining the station platform 

6 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

with sneers and laughter. It is not pleas- 
ant to think of the laughter and the sneers. 
They recall the pangs of impotent fury, 
moments of seeing red, the imagining of the 
possession of a vengeance wreaking power, 
of the strength to shatter and blast. 



II 



A WAR TIME CROSSING — SHIPBOARD SPY 
MANIA — FALMOUTH AND LONDON 

IT was the eighth day out of New York 
that we first touched elbows with the 
reality of war. We were running up to- 
wards the English coast. "We are nearing 
the minefields/' was the word passed from 
passenger to passenger. Ahead of us, 
though beyond the vision, the sweepers were 
clearing a path of safety. Suddenly the 
ship slowed down, and markedly changed its 
course. "Orders from the British Admir- 
alty" was the explanation. As darkness 
came down, a blazing light was made to play 
on the Dutch tricolor flying at the masthead. 
"See who we are and don't fire," the flag 
seemed to be saying. Then, in the morning, 

8 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

we saw the brown Scillies. Out of the sky 
came a huge oblong floating object. It was 
a British ParsevaL It scrutinized us, then 
apparently satisfied, turned northward, 
changed its mind, returned, and followed us 
all the way from Land's End to Falmouth 
Harbor. I had left New York on Sunday, 
January 7th, by the Holland-American 
liner, Nieuw Amsterdam, for a minimum 
service of six months with the American 
Commission for Relief in Belgium. Fate 
had written that those six months were never 
to be finished. I was to be the last delegate 
to reach the occupied country. Others 
started later, but were turned back by 
events. Thus, although the amount of work 
I was able to accomplish seems, looking 
backwards, ridiculously inadequate, I shall 
always retain the title of the C. R. B. 
nouveau. Crossing with me was Arrow- 
smith of New York. He was returning, 

9 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

after a few months' absence, to work that he 
had begun more than a year before. He 
had been stationed at Liege, and his descrip- 
tions of the city and of the Ardennes hills 
and valleys, forests and winding streams, 
brought back vividly the Walter Scott 
romance, "Quentin Durward." I seemed 
to see the great bianquet hall in the Castle, 
the murdered Bishop, the terrified Liegeois, 
and to hear the Scottish Archer's ringing 
call of defiance and warning to the Wild 
Boar. 

Going to Europe was not the casual affair 
of happier affairs. There is a story in it- 
self in the complications attendant upon pro- 
curing the United States passport, the futile 
search for the birth certificate — ^we were lax 
in those matters in the years when the world 
was young — ^the going about from Con- 
sulate to Consulate for the necessary vises. 
In the end a baptismal certificate was ac- 
10 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

cepted in lieu of the birth certificate which 
could not be found, and the passport, "ob- 
ject — reUef work" was issued for travel in 
Great Britain, Holland and Belgium. The 
later additions of Germany, Switzerland, 
France and Spain were not then foreseen. 
At the beginning of January, the Nieuw 
Amsterdam was regarded, from the points 
of comfort and safety, as the best boat cross- 
ing the Atlantic. Consequently the pas- 
senger list was a heavy one and all nationali- 
ties were represented. You became con- 
scious of the babel of tongues in the long 
waiting in line at the Hoboken pier in the 
winter evening, imder the flickering arc 
light. On the ship that spirit of unconven- 
tional friendhness which has always been a 
feature of travel by sea — ^which made 
acquaintance without the formality of in- 
troduction a matter of course — ^was mark- 
edly absent. You were guarded in your 
11 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

talK, the war was a subject to be discussed 
only with those of whom you felt compara- 
tively sure, you looked from face to face 
in the smoking room, speculating as to who 
were making the trip for reasons of political 
espionage. When a stranger entered into 
conversation with you, you felt that you 
must lead him to the point where he would 
have to pronounce "squirrel" before becom- 
ing confidential. You were listening 
acutely for shades of accent. In the spy 
mania rampant, there were probably many 
injustices done. There was a tall, noisy 
blond, who invaded, uninvited, every corner 
of conversation, who told marvelous tales of 
escapes from prison camps, and who was 
heard conversing with the ship's stewards in 
singularly fluent German. The English 
lady across the table — incidentally her own 
intimate knowledge of Berlin, Paris, Lon- 
don and Washington and her repeated cross- 
12 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

ings made her hard to place — ^turned her 
eyes suspiciously in his direction. "I am 
convinced that he has his number in the Wil- 
helmstrasse" was the way she expressed it. 
There were others who shared that opinion. 
"Nonsense," said a well known member of 
the Canadian Parhament a few days later, 
**I know all about him. I've known him 
all his life. I know his family in Ottawa. 
The only thing the matter with him is that 
he is rather light in the head and he hkes to 
hear himself talk." Then there was the 
young woman with the eyes who was sup- 
posed to be going to Rome as a Red Cross 
nurse and who kept in training for hospital 
work by playing poker — ^very profitable to 
herself — from morning to night. In a word 
the voyage was a nine-days' game of "Sus- 
pect your neighbor." We were to learn the 
difference between the easy going, too credu- 
lous England of other days and the England 
13 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

that had learned the lesson taught by grim 
war. That examination of passengers in 
the wooden sheds on the Falmouth Dock 
lasted from early morning until nearly sun- 
down. I can imagine nothing more polite 
and nothing more thorough. Scotland Yard 
was there aiding the military authorities. 
In my own case I was saved by chance from 
a possible detention of several days. 
Through an oversight I had failed to obtain 
from the C. R. B. office the necessary papers 
stating my business in England. "You 
have nothing to show why you are here," 
said the officers. But a commission that I 
had neither invited nor welcomed soon 
smoothed the way. Frederick Pahner, who 
is the accredited representative of the Amer- 
ican Press to the British Army and Fleet, 
had asked me to take the manuscript of his 
"My Second Year of the War" to England 
in order that it might be censored by the 
14 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

British War Office. My last impression of 
New York was of Palmer, bareheaded, run- 
ming after my taxicab, as it left the Players 
Club, to throw in the concluding chapters. 

Behind the examiners a man was standing. 
He scrutinized me sharply and ran his eyes 
over the papers that I had submitted. It 
was his whispered suggestion that led to the 
question. 

"Have you a manuscript of any kind with 
you?" 

I replied that I had. 

"What is it?" 

"Frederick Palmer's new war book." 

"Please go and get it." 

When I returned with the manuscript the 
stranger stepped forward. He was a Royal 
Messenger from the War Office. Mr. 
Palmer had cabled word of my coming. 
He had been sent from London to meet me. 
He would relieve me of the manuscript and 
15 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

assume all responsibility. Wide open were 
flung the doors that led to the waiting train. 
With curtains tight drawn against the 
night, we wound our way across Cornwall 
and South Devon, Somersetshire and on into 
Paddington. It was almost midnight when 
we arrived, and the effect of the taxi ride, 
from station to hotel, through the fog barely 
pierced by the dim lights, was that of climb- 
ing a great hill. "In the morning you must 
go to Bow Street Police Station to report 
the first thing," were the last words of en- 
joinment, as I sought my room for the night. 
Somehow the very name brought a shock. 
My sleep was broken by dreams of a gor- 
geously criminal past. "Report to Bow 
Street in the morning!" I might have been 
a Claude Duval, a Jack Sheppard, I might 
even have been a Militant Suifragette. As 
I look back now, however, I am not thinking 
of the visits to Bow Street that I made but 
16 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

of the one that I was spared. One of the 
precautionary measures against Zeppelin 
raids is the imposition of a severe punish- 
ment on any one who shows a brightly 
lighted window. It was almost three 
o'clock in the morning and I was reading, 
with my feet gloriously stretched out to the 
fire, when the telephone rang, and rang 
again. The police were below, seeking the 
one responsible for the offending glare. 
But the discovery that it was just one of 
those "fool Americans" seemed to satisfy 
them. Assured that the curtains were 
drawn tight against the night, they went 
away. 



17 



Ill 

RUNNING THE MINE FIELDS — ^ROTTERDAM 
— BELGIANS IN HOLLAND — THE WIRE 

IT was understood that from ten days to 
two weeks would be the amount of time 
that we would be likely to remain in London 
waiting for orders from Brussels and Rot- 
terdam. We arrived the night of Wednes- 
day, January 16th. About noon, the fol- 
lowing Monday, we were informed that we 
were to start that evening. At half past 
seven, we took our seats in the train for 
Gravesend. To each of us, as we left the 
C. R. B. offices, had been handed a huge 
package with instructions to return it from 
the Rotterdam office if we reached there. 
"It is a special kind of life preserver," they 
18 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

explained, "the particular property and in- 
vention of the C. R. B." I recalled the trip 
from Victoria to Gravesend in other days 
as one of three quarters of ah hour. On 
this occasion, it was nearer two hours and a 
half. Then three hours more of waiting be- 
hind locked doors in an icy cold compart- 
ment. A friendly guard thrust his head in 
and explained that the delay was caused by 
the fact that there were ninety-eight interned 
Germans on the train who were being 
shipped across for Germany via Holland. 
They had to be examined first. When our 
turn came, it was past two, and it was past 
three when finally we walked up the gang 
plank of the Prinz Heinrich. In a way the 
examination,of baggage had been more rigid 
than that at Falmouth. Landing they had 
taken away my gold; departing they took 
every bit of writing, all my books and the 
pack of playing cards that I had acquired 
19 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

for solitaire, as an assurance against monot- 
onous hours. It was just as well. There 
were very few monotonous hours coming. 
It was six in the morning when the boat 
sailed and after two or three hours of sleep 
in a cubby hole, we crawled on deck to find 
a high wind and a choppy sea. Noon, and 
we were nearing the region of the minefields, 
and the order was given out that, every pas- 
senger must have his life preserver ready at 
hand. The bow of the ship was rising and 
then smashing down again. I could not 
help thinking how easy that motion would 
make the work of the mine in the event of 
our striking one. Similar thoughts were in 
the mind of Arrowsmith, standing at my 
side. "I would live just about five minutes 
in that icy water," he said with a gloomy 
smile. We would have rather welcomed the 
appearance of a German torpedo boat to 
take us into Zeebrugge. That had been the 
20 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

fate of the Prinz Heinricli on her previous 
trip. But just then I felt the happy pallor 
of impending seasickness spreading over my 
face and began to be very brave when I 
thought about the mines. 

The lights were burning when we reached 
the mouth of the Scheldt. In quieter water, 
I recalled seeing the provision ships flying 
the flag of the C. R. B. and two British tor- 
pedo boats and hearing the boom of distant 
guns. We learned what the sound had 
meant the next morning in Rotterdam — an 
engagement between English and German 
torpedo fleets. The German wounded were 
being landed in Holland. Again in Rotter- 
dam we had anticipated a delay of doubtful 
duration. Again we were rushed quickly 
through. 

Ten days to a fortnight, in this con- 
demned town, had been Arrowsmith's pes- 
simistic prophecy as, after the walk through 
21 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

the streets at midnight, we found ourselves 
in the Maas Hotel. Nor did the prospect 
seem any more promising when, in the morn- 
ing we reported at the Headquarters of the 
Commission. No. 98 Haringvliet faces a 
tree bordered street beside a busy canal in 
the heart of the city. It was the official 
address of all the Americans who as dele- 
gates went into Belgium. If your friends 
at home addressed letters there and the Fates 
were kind, and the Germans approved of the 
contents, you might get them in time, which 
meant anywhere from six weeks to six 
months later. Over the faces of the men in 
98 spread a grin when, in answer to ques- 
tions, I acknowledged the possession of 
binoculars and a camera. Of the binocu- 
lars I was particularly proud. They had 
been a parting present. "Where do you 
think you are going! Through the Niagara 
Rapids in the Maid of the Mist, or down 
22 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

to Luna Park?" But my embarrassment 
disappeared, when, in turning over these 
possessions, I saw the safe half full of other 
cameras and field glasses left for safe keep- 
ing by previous delegates. 

Information that Arrowsmith received at 
98 Haringvliet sent him scurrying off in 
search of old friends, Belgians whom he had 
last seen in Liege, and who, at desperate 
risks, had made their way past the wire to 
the friendly soil of Holland. Two or three 
of them appeared at the hotel and from their 
lips I listened to the many strange, romantic 
stories of escape. Of one of them, with 
whom I was to dine that night, Arrowsmith 
said to me with a smile: **It was his boy." 
I knew at once to what the reference was. 
It was Arrowsmith's pet story, which he told 
so often and which was so well worth the 
telling. It concerned a little Liegeois, six 
years old, who had conceived a passionate 
23 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

attachment to the American. But one day- 
he saw Arrowsmith riding by in a motor car 
by the side of a German oflSicer. Heart- 
broken, shaken with sobs, the boy rushed off 
to his mother. "Oh, mamam! J'ai vu Ar- 
rowsmith, mon ami, avec un Boche!" And 
later, when man and boy met, the latter's 
greeting was one of sad accusation, "Je t'ai 
vu avec un Boche." 

The morning of Thursday, January 25th, 
we took our seats in the train for Rosendael. 
There we were met by Rene Jansen, the C. 
R. B. courier. In a motor car we dashed 
southward towards the frontier. Soon the 
road began to be littered with Dutch sol- 
diers, the material evidence of Holland's 
two and a half years' mobilization against 
the feared invasion. Then came a point 
where there were no more Dutch uniforms 
to be seen. I asked why. We were on 
Belgian soil, in what is known as the Grenz- 
24 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

zone. Suddenly, as we rounded a turn, we 
were confronted by a great double gate of 
reenforced wood barring the road. To right 
and left stretched a thin ribbon of steel. It 
was the famous electric wire stretched across 
Northern Belgium to prevent the Belgians 
from escaping into Holland. Behind, a 
hundred feet apart, paced men of the Ger- 
man Landsturm, Our car came to a stop. 
The double gates swung open. "This is the 
neck," said Arrowsmith. "You are going 
into the Bottle. The Lord knows when or 
whether you get out of it again." 

I had heard much of the German system. 
I was to hear more of it from the boasting 
lips of German officers. It may be very 
fine, it may be very thorough, but from my 
own personal contact with it, I have found 
it childish compared to the system that I 
had encountered in England and the system 
that I was later to encounter in France. In 
25 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

thinking of it I recall a character in one of 
Edgar Allan Poe's stories of a man poring 
over a map. He could find the name of the 
smallest hamlet but he could not read the 
continents. One day crossing the frontier 
will mean being stripped and having your 
back painted with acid to be sure that you 
are not carrying any secret writings; the 
next you could carry a message of military 
purport from the British War Office to every 
able-bodied male subject in Belgium. Our 
examination at the wire was conducted by 
a fat, dull-eyed under ofiicer aided by a 
sleepy boy in his teens. The under officer 
wrote in a ledger; the boy without looking 
streaked fingers through trunk trays and 
bags. Soldiers stood about looking blankly 
into nothingness. There was an hour's wait 
for no apparent reason, and then we entered 
another motor car, this one flying the red 
and white emblem of the C. R. B. Across 
26 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

the flat country, over the jolting pave, we 
were hurried at forty-five miles an hour. 
The roads were deserted save for an occa- 
sional dog-drawn cart. The Belgian chien 
de trait had so far escaped requisitioning. 
Beyond Antwerp, where we stopped for a 
late luncheon, we saw, in the shells of what 
had once been prosperous villages, the first 
evidences of the Krupp guns. When we 
reached Brussels the lights were beginning 
to glitter in the Rue Royale. 



27 



IV 



FIRST BRUSSELS IMPRESSIONS — ^THE INVADERS 
— GERMAN SOLDIERS — THE MEN OF THE 
C. R. B. — CLOCKS, RESTAURANTS AND 
THEATERS 

THE first impressions of Brussels were 
of a city surprisingly, almost disap- 
pointingly, normal. It was in the bright 
light. The Ministers of the neutral coun- 
tries were there to observe and to report. 
It was the home of the occupying military 
government, and upon its material comfort 
depended the comfort of thousands of Ger- 
man officers. There was, in the early part 
of 1917, still a hope that the sympathy, or at 
least the tolerating acquiescence, of a part 
of the Bruxellois might be won over to the 
Imperial Government. The uniforms did 
28 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

not push civilians off the sidewalks nor 
hustle them about in tramcars. Yet never 
for a moment could one get away from the 
sense of occupation. 

Before the war the names of the streets 
and squares were printed first in French and 
then in Flemish. The Germans' scheme re- 
versed the order. "Divide to rule" has ever 
been the motto of the Hapsburgs and the 
HohenzoUerns have adapted it to Belgium. 
The occupying government in a thousand 
ways and on every possible occasion seeks to 
divide, to pit Walloon against Fleming; 
Limbourg against the Brabant. Every- 
where the agents are at work, raking up 
historical injustices, emphasizing the differ- 
ences of race and language. But though 
outwardly submissive they are a hard people 
to drive, these Belgians. There may have 
been discontent before, but the invasion and 
its cruelties have united them, welded them 
29 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

more than ever into one people. "Who are 
the figures in the war that stand out as he- 
roes to the Belgian imagination? Joifre? 
Poincare? Lloyd-George? Haig?" I once 
asked a Belgian. There was reproof in the 
grave reply, "Why our own, of course. 
Our King and Cardinal Mercier." Albert's 
subjects may have grumbled at times when 
he was in the palace at Brussels or at 
Laeken, but to-day, holding the court to- 
gether at Havre, a King of whose kingdom 
only a strip of sandy coast remains, he is 
an heroic, an inspiring figure, the incarna- 
tion of Belgiimi's rights, and the spirit of 
the Brabanponne, That he remains com- 
paratively passive under the yoke does not 
mean that the Belgian is resigned to it. 
When he resisted by force of arms Prussian 
aggression and paid the terrible price he did 
his share. On England, France and the 
United States rests the duty of restoring 
30 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

him to his own. That has been his history. 
The fact that his land has been the Cockpit 
of Europe has relieved him of certain re- 
sponsibilities. 

The Belgian of the past may be compared 
to the proprietor of a tavern on the highway 
to which brawlers insist on coming. He 
could not bar his door against the intruders, 
or quell the disturbance. So when the bot- 
tles began to fly and plates were being 
smashed, he sought, with the wisdom of ex- 
perience, a corner of safety, and when the 
row had spent itself, emerged to say, "Now, 
gentlemen, I expect you to pay for the 
breakage and to set the place in order. 
From the appearance of the room you must 
have enjoyed yourselves immensely. But 
please don't forget that it is my room." 

But the Prussian vision, which sees so 
far, and yet which, from some curious astig- 
matism, overlooks so much that is perfectly 
31 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

obvious, was once again at fault. In the 
beginning the Germans counted on speedy 
assimilation. They were bringing the boon 
of Teutonic Kultur. After a few months 
had healed the wounds of invasion the Bel- 
gians would recognize the quality df the 
blessing. To be a part of the German Em- 
pire, to acknowledge the all wise rule of the 
Hohenzollerns ! To the German mind that 
meant what conferring Roman citizenship 
meant in the eyes of the Roman of the time 
of Augustus. Von Kluck, on the march to- 
wards Paris before the Battle of the Marne, 
telling the frightened peasants who were 
brought before him that they would all be 
Germans and that it would be the best thing 
for them, was sincere. He was merely ex- 
pressing the conviction that has, for a gen- 
eration and a half, been scientifically drilled 
into the German mind, a conviction the ex- 
pression of which seemed always to be hov- 
32 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

ering on the lips of the gray coated officers 
we loiew in Brussels. But after two years 
of occupation the expected change of heart 
had not come. There could be no mistaking 
the sentiments that lurked behind eyes that 
were now sullen, now mocking. 

Belgian resentment is based on patriotism 
and also on pigheadedness. Do not forget 
that the Belgian of to-day is the true lineal 
descendant of the volunteer of the barricades 
of 1830. The Dutch regulars under Prince 
Frederick had forced an entry into Brussels. 
But they found the Royal Park a trap. 
From the surrounding windows came a con- 
tinuous fire. Every house was an ambush. 
They would have been annihilated or forced 
to lay down their arms were it not that the 
citizen soldiers of Brussels considered that 
fighting was a business to be carried on in 
business hours only. Every evening, after 
a day's work spent bravely on the barricades, 
33 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

the volunteers left their posts, returned to 
their homes, or went to their accustomed 
cafes to spend the evening in tranquillity. 

We had encountered sentinels at every 
turn of the journey from the frontier; in 
Brussels they were everywhere. Landsturm 
men, bands carrying the word "Politzei" on 
their arms, were in every square. The Ger- 
man flag was flying over the Palais de Jus- 
tice, the Bourse, the King's Palace, every 
public building of the city. The Palais de 
Justice was a German barrack, the King's 
Palace a military hospital. The building in 
which took place the Duchess of Richmond's 
Ball the night before the Battle of Waterloo 
was the Pass Zentrale, to which you applied 
for your permit to ride in a motor car or 
to make a journey to Holland. Every pub- 
lic building had been taken over for some 
kind of military use and thousands of pri- 
vate houses had been requisitioned as habi- 
34 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

tations for the officers. How many soldiers 
there were in the capital it would be hard to 
say. The number varied from week to 
week. But always it was to be estimated 
by the tens of thousands. There was noth- 
ing of the romance of war in their appear- 
ance. The green-gray uniforms were soiled 
and shabby. The faces of the men were 
for the most part woodenly inexpressive. 
There had been a marked change, I was 
told, since the previous summer. Formerly 
the soldiers sang, and the officers banged 
tables and toasted one another in the Palace 
Hotel. But gayety went out with the col- 
lapse of the Kaiser's peace overtures. Then 
there had been bonfires in the streets and 
the soldiers had danced around them, and 
clapped one another on the back and told 
every one how the war was victoriously over 
and how they were all going home. Had 
not the Kaiser decreed it? The disillusion- 
35 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

ment brought a bitter, sullen disappoint- 
ment. The third day after my arrival was 
the Kaiser's birthday. There was an at- 
tempt to manifest a little spirit and enthusi- 
asm. But it was so obviously forced. 

Some of the men of the C. R. B. stayed 
in pensions. But most of us lived in houses 
which had been placed at the disposal of 
the Commission by the owners for the double 
motive of appreciation of the work that was 
being done and in order to keep them from 
being occupied by the "Boches." It was at 
No. 126 Avenue Louise, a broad thorough- 
fare lined by some of the city's finest resi- 
dences and running from the circle of Boule- 
vards to the Bois de la Cambre, that I went 
to live. The owner of the house had been 
lucky enough to cross into France before 
the occupation and was living in Paris. In 
the house, which had been left in charge of 
two servants, eight of us. Leach, Maverick, 
36 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

Wickes, Kittredge, Arrowsmith, Curtis, 
Sperry and I, had some sort of headquarters. 
It was seldom that more than four or five 
appeared at the breakfast table. Maverick 
was a North of France man. Wickes spent 
the greater part of the week in Namur. 
Sperry, to whom was attributed the immor- 
tal motj "There isn't one of these foreign 
countries, but what, if you live in it long 
enough, it will *get your goat,' " usually had 
an engagement elsewhere. But no matter 
what the number present, here was no chance 
to complain of the monotony of existence. 
"The life of an American delegate is a hard 
life," Maverick one day said whimsically. 
"Here we are forced to live in a place quite 
as humble as the average house that you see 
on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park. 
I am reduced to the humiliation of riding 
about in an Overland car with a chauffeur 
only in half livery. To-night I shall prob- 
37 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

ably be obliged to dine at the Taverne Roy- 
ale." But in a way Maverick's flippancy 
was designed to cheer us up. When the 
words were spoken the thermometer at the 
side of the mantelpiece registered 8° above 
zero Fahrenheit. It was the bitterest win- 
ter in recent history and coal was not to be 
had. 

But our lot in 126 Avenue Louise was 
no more uncomfortable than the lot of the 
other delegates. Everywhere was the same 
shivering splendor. In the Avenue Marnix 
— No. 18 — lived Jackson, Brown, Pate, and 
Osborn. Somewhere in the rather re- 
mote Rue Africaine was the habitation of 
Fletcher and Simpson, In the Rue Saint 
Bernard, in a house where in the dining 
room there was a fire-place with a gas con- 
trivance that radiated real heat that could 
be felt almost six feet away, Thwaits, Wil- 
liams, Percy, and Dyer lived happily. 
38 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

There was a delightful gray haired, soft 
eyed little Abbe who liked the company, the 
cooking, and the wines at No. 58 Rue Saint 
Bernard. About once a week he appeared 
at the dinner hour. "Set an extra cover. 
Monsieur I'Abbe will dine with us to-night," 
the bonne would be told. *'Oh, yes, Mon- 
sieur. I already know. Monsieur. Mon- 
sieur I'Abbe stopped here last evening to 
inform me that he would be dining here 
to-night, and to suggest the courses." The 
Director and his son lived in the Rue de 
Commerce, and the Assistant Director in a 
young palace facing the Royal Park. 

Five o'clock was the closing time for all 
shops ; nine o'clock for cafes, restaurants and 
theaters. The Germans called the hours six 
and ten. They had turned all the public 
clocks in Belgium forward an hour to con- 
form with the clocks in Berlin. In the se- 
clusion of your house or your pocket, you 
39 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

might carry the hour more in accordance 
with the Brussels changes of light and dark- 
ness. Thus there were two times, — "There 
is Boche time and there is Christian time," 
was the way the Belgians expressed it. A 
surprising epidemic had broken out among 
the public clocks of Belgium. It was the 
Great Plague in the history of clocks. 
Never before have so many clocks gone so 
hopelessly and irreparably out of order — 
immolated on the altar of patriotism. Be- 
fore the war, even Parisians were known to 
speak with envy of the Brussels cuisine. 
The resources at their disposal may have 
grown more limited but the cooks have lost 
none of their cunning. Those people who 
could afford to pay could dine, and dine well. 
There were of course the two meatless days 
a week, there were restrictions as to the num- 
ber of courses allowed and there was the 
rationing of bread. 

40 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

The Taverne Royale once served a patron 
a rabbit stew on a Tuesday. That rabbit 
stew deserves a place with the bill of fare 
which the bandit Luigi Vampa offered to 
Danglars in the last part of the "Count of 
Monte Cristo." It cost the proprietor of 
the restaurant twenty-five thousand francs. 
Prices were naturally high. In the little 
restaurants near the Grand Place, for which 
the city has so long been famous, such res- 
taurants as the Filet de Sole, the Gigot de 
Mouton, the £paule de Mouton, the bill 
presented at the end of an ordinary dinner 
would be from forty to fifty francs. The 
only communications appearing in the Bel- 
gian newspapers that could be regarded as 
sincere, were certain plaintive letters recall- 
ing the bill of fares at two francs fifty or 
three francs fifty in the days of yore. Yet 
after a time one began to take prices philo- 
sophically. After all a franc was not a 
41 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

franc: it was only, by compulsion, four-fifths 
of a German mark — a matter of twelve cents 
instead of approximately twenty. We con- 
soled ourselves with that thought. Later 
we found it hard to adjust ourselves to new 
conditions when we reached Switzerland and 
France. It led us to extravagance. 

If an egg cost a franc, a pair of boots was 
proportionately even higher. Yet it was 
surprising to see the brave showing made by 
the shop windows of Brussels, despite two 
and a half years' unproductiveness, and the 
shutting off of supplies from the outside 
world. Some of the shops even went so far 
as to advertise that all the goods displayed 
in the etalages were being sold at the prices 
of August 1st, 1914. Half of the Brussels 
theaters were open with the prices of seats 
ridiculously low, 2.75 francs for a fauteuil 
d'orchestre, 4 francs for a box seat. They 
42 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

were playing mostly old plays, such as the 
"Count of Luxembourg" at the Scala and 
Dumas' "L'Etrangere" at the Mohere. 



43 



*'rOR GOD, FOR COUNTRY, AND FOR YALE!" 

PERHAPS a few words of introduc- 
tion are necessary to explain an im- 
pression that I shall always retain with par- 
ticular vividness. The music to which a 
great many of the songs of our American 
Universities are set belonged originally and 
in a number of cases still belong to tunes of 
earlier and foreign origin. Thus a visiting 
Englishman, in the Cambridge Stadium the 
afternoon of a Yale or Princeton football 
game, would find himself at home with the 
strains of "Fair Harvard. Thy sons to thy 
jubilee throng," because he has always 
known them as the medium of Tom Moore's 
"Believe me if all those endearing young 
44 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

charms!" Two years ago, in the Palmer 
Stadimn at Princeton, I witnessed the an- 
nual contest between Harvard and Prince- 
ton in company with Roger Boutet de Mon- 
vel, the son of the painter, and himself an 
author of conspicuous talent. In the in- 
terval between the halves the Harvard cheer- 
ing section broke into a song and by the 
waving of handkerchiefs, displayed a huge 
crimson H. The Frenchman turned, his 
cheeks slightly flushed. "Why," he said, 
"they are singing the Marseillaise/^ "Dear 
old Yale," more generally known as "Bright 
College Years," is the German national 
anthem; Columbia's "Hail Columbia" the 
adaptation of an old Austrian hymn. Cor- 
nell's "Up Above Cayuga's Waters" is 
"Lovely Annie Lisle." 

I had seen soldiers, thousands of them, but 
as units, or in little groups of two or three. 
I wanted to see them en masse, to catch the 
45 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

effect of that almost invisible green-gray 
uniform of which I had heard so much. I 
remembered the description of the march o£ 
the German armies through Brussels given 
me by some one who had seen it. "You 
could see the horses of the passing Uhlans," 
the man had told me, "but you could not 
see the riders. As, chanting, the column 
climbed the slope of the Chaussee de Lou- 
vain, it seemed to be swinging out of the 
Feudal Ages," was the way in which Brand 
Whitlock was later to picture it. The 
chance came the second day after the arrival 
in Brussels. A little before noon, I had left 
the C. R. B. offices at 66 Rue des Colonies 
and climbed the short cobbly ascent to the 
Rue Royale. There was the sound of roll- 
ing drums. Across the Place Royale, round 
the equestrian statue of Godfrey de Bouil- 
lon, swung the head of the column, on its 
way to the change of guard mount. On it 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

came, nearer and nearer, the bayonets flash- 
ing in the sunlight, the tramp of the iron- 
shod boots timing with the drum taps. 
Fifty yards more and the head of the column 
would be opposite the point on the sidewalk 
where I was watching. The band leader 
turned, waved his baton and there blared out 
the strains of Die Wacht Am Rhein, 

Then, something very curious happened; 
something that I can never explain; that I 
shall never forget. It was the hold of the 
years. The moment, the scene, the green- 
gray column against the trees of the oppo- 
site park, passed from the vision and from 
the mind. The notes brought a thrill to the 
heart, a tingle to the cheeks, a poignant 
memory of kindlier strife. I seemed to be 
looking over a vast amphitheater. University 
Field at Princeton, or the old Yale Field, 
or the Bowl, or the Palmer Stadium. I 
seemed to be seeing the waving of blue and 
47 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

orange and black, and tens of thousands of 
excited faces, among them those of the most 
beautiful girls in the world. I seemed to be 
seeing the green turf and the chalk lines, 
and the teams running on the field for the 
beginning of the second half, and in the 
great stand opposite the swinging hats of 
the cheering section. And the music was 
molding itself into the words, — 

Bright college years with pleasure rife 
The shortest, gladdest years of life. 
How swiftly are ye gliding by 
Oh, why doth time so quickly fly? 
The seasons come, the seasons go. 
The earth is green, or white with snow. 
But time and change shall naught avail 
To break the friendships formed at Yale. 

In after life, when troubles rise 

To cloud the blue of sunny skies. 

How bright will seem through memory's haze. 

Those happy, golden, bygone days; 



48 



GETTING INTO THE BOTTLE 

Oh ! let us strive that ever we 
May let these words our watchcry be : 
Where'er upon life's sea we sail. 
For God, for Country and for Yale! 



49 



PART II 
INSIDE THE BOTTLE 



THE COMMISSION AND ITS CHIEF THE C. N. 

r — MOTOR CARS THE AGGLOMERATION 

THE SLEUTHS — THE DOCK OFFICE — 
STAGING THE COMEDY 

SO much has been written about the C. 
R. B. and its work that I shall try to 
sketch the organization in the fewest pos- 
sible strokes. We were in Belgium for the 
ravitaillementj wonderful and almost un- 
translatable word. Belgium invaded, her 
army driven to the Yser, her industries para- 
lyzed, much of her live stock requisitioned 
by the conquerors, was in desperate need. 
Then, in October, 1914, the C. R. B. came 
into being, and from various ports in the 
western world the ships flying its flag began 
streaming across the Atlantic, laden with the 
53 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

yield of the wheat fields of Kansas and Can- 
ada, and the products of the Chicago stock- 
yards. 

To the helm a great man had been called. 
I have never met Herbert Clark Hoover. 
Three days before I landed at Falmouth he 
sailed for the United States from Liverpool. 
Then the Belgian Bottle became a bottle 
with a sealed cork. When I reached France 
in April he was in England. But it was 
not necessary to meet him to know. The 
evidence of the C. R. B., the organization's 
unswerving loyalty, profound belief, deep 
seated admiration, were enough. If they 
were not I would accept the verdict of the 
Belgian, £mile Francqui. Once the wran- 
gling over agreements and concessions were 
more than usually accute. The occupying 
military authorities felt that theirs was the 
whip hand, and they were not gentle in push- 
ing their advantage. The Chief bided his 
54 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

time. One day, like a bolt from the blue, 
came his sweeping order. "Stop the work. 
Disband the Commission. Send the men 
home." He had seized upon the exact 
moment, the one hour above all others when 
the Germans stood in greatest need of our 
work for the Belgians. Panic stricken, they 
yielded upon all points. When Francqui 
heard what had happened his hands were 
tossed skyward in astonished tribute. The 
equivalent in Americanese of his comment 
was: ''Some diplomat!" 

Rotterdam was the C. R. B. port of des- 
tination, and from there the cargoes were 
distributed, mostly through the medium of 
the remarkable canal system, to the various 
provinces of Belgium, and the occupied sec- 
tion of the North of France. C. R. B. of- 
fices were maintained in New York, Lon- 
don, Paris, Rotterdam and Brussels. New 
York saw to the chartering and filling of the 
55 



BOTTLED UE IN BELGIUM 

ships. London and Paris nursed them 
across the Atlantic. Rotterdam received 
them, unloaded them, sent them back again, 
and then forwarded their cargoes. Brus- 
sels was the headquarters at the front. 
From there, through the C. R. B. and the 
C. N., the food was passed on in turn to 
the Provincial Committees, the Regional 
Committees, the Communal Committees. 
In the actual work of food distribution and 
various forms of inspection over forty thou- 
sand Belgians were continually engaged. 
Many of the cooks I met in the vast kitchens 
where the daily soup for the needy of Brus- 
sels was prepared had been, in days of peace, 
railway employees. In Belgium last win- 
ter there were about thirty men, who were 
C. R. B. delegates in the strict sense of the 
term. A delegate gave his services. His 
transportation from the United States to 
Belgium was provided, and he was allowed 
56 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

a certain daily sum to cover the actual ex- 
penses of habitation and food. First among 
the delegates were the Director, Warren 
Gregory, and the Assistant Director, Pren- 
tiss Gray. Both Californians. I am not 
going to tell what I think of them, because 
it would sound like fulsome flattery of Mr. 
Hoover, who selected them. 

Theirs was the not-over-pleasant task of 
dealing with the heads of the occupying gov- 
ernment. It was a position calling for 
great tact, self-control, and a saving Amer- 
ican sense of humor. But there were times 
when even the Director's good natured pa- 
tience was sorely tried. "You people have 
the most extraordinary ideas of your respon- 
sibilities," he once bluntly told the Germans. 
I think the occasion was a covert threat at 
shutting off the Belgian food supply in case 
the Commission did not yield in some point 
at issue. At another time a clear verbal 
57 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

agreement was reached and a cablegram to 
Mr. Hoover sent outlining that agreement. 
A few days later the Germans, having 
thought the matter over, were not so well 
pleased with the pact. The expedient to 
which they resorted was not unfamiliar. 
The director must have been mistaken. 
"It is not surprising," explained the High 
Command deprecatingly, ''I English so 
poorly speak. You must have misunder- 
stood." But suavely smiling the Director 
pointed out that His Excellency's excellent 
English could not have been responsible. 
The matter had long ceased to be one of 
mere verbal contract. His Excellency's 
promise had been embodied in the message 
cabled to the Chairman of the Commission. 
That cablegram had been sent by German 
hands; it had gone forth with the stamp, 
seal, and endorsement of the Imperial Ger- 
58 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

man Government. The original conversa- 
tion might have been unofficial; but not the 
message. 

Under the direction of the Director and 
Assistant Director, the delegates were as- 
signed and shifted. There were the North 
of France men. A North of France man 
was sent to Lille, or Saint-Quentin, or Val- 
enciennes, or Charleville, or Longwy. Day 
and night he was in the company of a Ger- 
man officer. The two had desks in the same 
office and occupied adjoining bedrooms. 
Somehow or other the officer always got the 
best desk and the best bedroom. They 
breakfasted, lunched, dined together. They 
sat side by side in the back seat of the motor 
car. If the officer wished to hold nightly 
revel in some cafe, he had to persuade the 
delegate to accompany him. The American 
was supposed to hold no communication 
59 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

with any unit of the civil population save in 
the presence of his officer. It was a Siamese 
twins kind of existence. 

In ones or twos, according to the size or 
importance of the region, were the men of 
the Belgian provinces, the men who lived at 
Liege, or Namur, or Antwerp, or in Luxem- 
bourg, or Limbourg, or the Hainault. 
They came to Brussels for a Thursday con- 
ference with the Director. The North of 
France men's day at the capital was Satur- 
day. Living in Brussels were the men of 
the Agglomeration Bruxellois, of the Bra- 
bant direction, the men who watched the 
docks and the mills, the men who overlooked 
the distribution of clothing, the man who 
looked after the question of passports and 
privileges and restrictions, and the organi- 
zation's secretary. Side by side with the 
C. R. B. was working the Comite National, 
60 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

the central organization by which the Bel- 
gians were helping themselves. 

The weekly meeting of the Comite Na- 
tional was also on Thursday morning im- 
mediately following our own meeting. We 
were expected to go from one to the other. 
In the cream and gold salon gathered many 
of the most important men of Belgium. 
But dominant over all, like a martinet of a 
school teacher among his pupils, was the 
chairman of the Committee, Emile Francqui. 
"Watch Francqui ride them" was whispered 
in my ear the morning of my first meeting 
as we took our seats and the chairman began 
the reading of the Ordre du Jour. Ride 
them he certainly did. But if he played the 
role of a dictator he was getting a dictator's 
results, and the situation was one in which 
a strong man was needed. "Did anything 
happen at the meeting to-day?" once asked 
61 



BOTTLED UE IN BELGIUM 

an American delegate who had arrived just 
in time to meet us fihng out. "Happen! 
We should say so," was the reply. "Francqui 
apologized to M. Tibbaut for having 
squelched him last week." 

That rare sight in the streets, a motor car 
— in all the city of Brussels there were less 
than a hundred — ^was almost certain to be 
flying either the flag of the C. N. or of the 
C. R. B. The exceptions were the cars be- 
longing to the legations, and those in which 
rode German officers of exalted rank. The 
German motor cars were few in number 
but they were astonishingly conspicuous. 
Recall certain feelings of about the year 
1900 when what we then referred to as a 
"red devil" dashed from a side street across 
a city avenue, or thundered wickedly by 
frightened horses on country roads. Very 
likely that murderous rate of speed was 
about sixteen miles an hour and if you were 

a2 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

to see the monster to-day with its short wheel 
base, its snub nosed motor, its archaic igni- 
tion and its high, awkward rear entrance 
tonneau you would be moved to derisive 
laughter. But seventeen or eighteen years 
ago the sight of it and the sound of it rasped 
the nerves. The arrogance of its bearing 
incited social unrest. It flaunted high 
handed prosperity before the eyes of the 
poor. It was an agent that if it did not 
hurry the coming of revolution, was at least 
certain to impair the vigor of the republic. 
And that is how the German driven motor 
cars affected you in 1917. Long before the 
siren screamed its commands the machine- 
gun like explosions from behind warned you 
of the car's coming. In the early months 
of the German occupation the cars had been 
equipped with a musical warning device that 
emitted a kind of flutelike two note call. 
But from behind cover Belgian small boys 
63 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

answered it echoingly with the words "Paris- 
Berhn," and in a short time the device was 
laughed off the cars. I do not know 
whether there was any punishment for fail- 
ing to make way at once for any overtaking 
German car. But Louis, the chauffeur, 
took no chance. The Overland would 
swerve far over to the right and the gray 
invader, carrying its stiff, rigidly sitting of- 
ficers would graze by. The driving wheels 
were always double tired. "They learned 
that from the French," snorted Louis. 
"They never thought of it themselves. 
Sales Boches!" I think the cars got even 
on German nerves at times. But it was in 
our direction that the hostile glances were 
directed. "JSTobody goes about in motors 
these days," a German was heard to grumble 
in one of the cafes, "except the high-ups and 
the American spies." That is how we were 
regarded long before the break. 
64 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

On my arrival I was destined for Liege, 
but a change of plan assigned me to the 
Agglomeration Bruxellois, and I found my- 
self plunged into mysterious problems con- 
cerning milling at 82 and tamise and blutage 
and goods avaries. The head of the depart- 
ment was Jackson of Massachusetts. I 
suspect that Jackson was not the best of 
teachers. I know that I was one of the most 
lamentable of pupils. The more I tried to 
get it all into my head, the more hopelessly 
entangled it seemed. Later I was to learn 
that my experience had been exactly the ex- 
perience of other men. Jackson and I 
wrangled, and we snarled, or, worse still, we 
were coldly polite. Never mind, Jackson, 
some day we are going to sit down at a table 
in less nerve- jangling surroundings, and 
laugh over my lacerated feelings and your 
irritated feelings. Then maybe you will 
come to believe that I am not such a drivel- 
Q5 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

ing idiot as I seemed in the office on the 
second floor of No. 66, In the Agglomera- 
tion I visited soupes scolaires and soupes 
populaires. I watched the Little Bees at 
their work. I accompanied the inspectors 
on their rounds of the bakeries. 

Especially I accompanied my two inspec- 
tors. Mine, because of them I shall always 
think with a feeling of proprietorship. As- 
suming that the reader has some acquaint- 
ance with the comic supplement of Ameri- 
can newspapers, imagine a Belgian Mutt 
and Jeff, with a flavor of Alphonse and 
Gaston. It goes without saying that one 
was extremely tall and the other comically 
short; that they were inseparable, and that 
each complemented the other. The office 
understanding their qualities, saw that they 
hunted together. They quarreled from 
time to time, they addressed each other cere- 
moniously, and their manner was one of ex- 
66 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

aggerated politeness. Starting out for the 
day's work the first delay was at the door of 
the little elevator of No. 66. There was 
always an amiable dispute as to who would 
enter last. It was not "After you, my dear 
Alphonse/' but "Je vous en prie, mon cher 
monsieur." No one not a Belgian can put 
into that "Je vous en prie" what a Belgian 
puts into it. But once in the full swing of 
their investigations, they were, as some one 
in the office — I think it was Jackson — ex- 
pressed it "Two hounds on the scent." They 
loved their art. Not Sherlock Holmes, or 
Poe's Dupin, or Gaboriau's Lecoq, or Pere 
Tirauclair ever took sleuthing more seri- 
ously. Their investigations led not along 
the highways of crime, but figuratively and 
literally into the tortuous narrow streets. 
The prey they were stalking was the baker 
who was putting too much water in his 
bread; or who was concealing in his cellar 
67 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

an extra sack of flour in order to sell it at 
an augmented price. They relied on unex- 
pected visits, on sudden surprises, in which 
one of them would hold the baker or the 
baker's wife in conversation, while the other 
would slip in through a side door to investi- 
gate. Again many of the clews on which 
they worked were furnished by the anony- 
mous letters of denunciation, of which a 
dozen or more were to be found in every 
morning's mail. But their joy in the labor 
when the paling cheek, the shifting eye, the 
faltering voice of the questioned person 
seemed to promise results. "Ah, Madame 
hesitates! Madame has contradicted her- 
self! Madame denies all knowledge of the 
chef in the restaurant in the Rue de 1' Arbre- 
Sec — ^when it seems that he is Madame's 
brother! Madame is trembling! Is it not 
so. Monsieur (this appeal directed at me) 
that Madame is trembhng? You see, Ma- 
68 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

dame, that the American gentleman who has 
come ten thousand miles for the ravitaille- 
ment perceives that you are trembling." 
Somehow face to face with the conflict, its 
comparative triviality was forgotten. It 
was a matter of a few loaves of bread. The 
probable punishment would be a warning; 
the maximum punishment a month's suspen- 
sion from baking. Yet there was anguish 
in the woman's twisting face, and triumph 
gleaming in the countenances of the inspec- 
tors. And as we emerged from the dark- 
ened bakery into the light of the street one 
or the other of my companions would flash 
me a look. It was hke Conan Doyle's hero 
commenting, "Deep waters, Watson!" or 
"This time I have found a foeman worthy 
of my steel." 

The aftermath of the investigations came 
in the bakers' trials that were held every 
two weeks in an improvised court room on 
69 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

the second floor of No. 66. The reports of 
the various inspectors would be weighed and 
sifted, the past records of the persons in- 
volved examined, and a certain number of 
letters sent out summoning the alleged cul- 
prits before the tribunal. Jackson or I or 
both of us were expected to be present as 
representing the C. R. B. although the part 
we played was about equivalent to that of 
the lay judge who in some States fattened 
on the American courts of fifteen or twenty 
years ago. We looked wise, severe, re- 
proachful, or sympathetic. We nodded 
gravely, and remarked in our best French, 
"II fait semblant de ne pas comprendre/' 
when some Fleming, by a pretended inabil- 
ity to understand his own or any other lan- 
guage, sought to evade the searching ques- 
tions. 

Also, in the weeks with the Agglomera- 
tion, I learned to hold the loaves knowingly 
70 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

against my ear to detect the presence of too 
much water, to pronounce judgment as to 
whether it was well or poorly baked. I ab- 
sorbed words of which the French Academy 
is probably ignorant, and then forgot them. 
I studied the charts lining the corridors — 
the charts marking the ships on the oceans, 
and showing the amount of "riz," "sain- 
doux," "froment," "lard," and sucre" ex- 
pected. Then the delegate who had what 
was known as the ''dock job" started for 
home and I was told to take his place. My 
headquarters was my desk in a small frame 
building at the Bassin Vergote. 

My feeling for Brussels is not that of 
Leonard Merrick, who, referring to Paris, 
says somewhere that visiting the Belgian 
Capital is like calling on the sister of the 
woman with whom you are in love. Some 
day, not too far in the future, I hope to 
go back, to find a beautiful city and a smil- 
71 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

ing people. Over the Palais de Justice and 
the Hotel de Ville the red, yellow and black 
will be flying instead of the red, white and 
black. The public clocks of the land will 
have recovered from their curious malady 
and will be ringing out the Belgian hours. 
If I am haled to punishment for having 
attempted to sing the "Braban9onne," or 
the "Marseillaise," or "Tipperary," or 
"Yankee Doodle" in a public place, it will 
be because of the quality of the singing, 
and not on account of the nationality of 
the tune. In the Taverne Royale, or the 
Filet of Sole, or the Shoulder of Mutton, 
I shall sit down to dinner with a blessed 
"Curfew shall not ring to-night" feeling. 
King Albert will be riding out from the 
Palace, and bowing and saluting, and there 
will be no gray-green uniforms in the streets, 
and the goose step will be far away, and 
in blasted villages the work of reconstruct 
72. 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

tion will be going on. Then there will be 
many spots to be revisited, and one of the 
very first will be that wooden shack between 
the vast Hangars where I spent so many 
hours with the timid, soft voiced De Schut- 
ter, and Cambier of the Assyrian beard. 

To that shack I made my way every morn- 
ing, past the sentinels at the grille. Some- 
times I was challenged and sometimes I was 
not. There was the need of signing many 
papers as the C. R. B. delegate. Outside 
were the tasks of speeding up the unloading 
of the alleges, of going to the Hafenant, the 
German portmaster, to try to find out why 
this hotelier was refused his papers to sail, 
and that one to unload — the Belgians of the 
Dock Office could not be dragged to the 
Hafenanfs office — of visiting the freight 
station in search of incoming C. R. B. cars, 
and the great mills that lie to the north of 
the city at Schaarbeek and Haren and Vil- 
73 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

vorde. It was on one of my first mornings 
on this work that I witnessed a comedy. 

The papers were all signed and there was 
need to go to the Trois Fontaines at Vil- 
vorde in search of a missing freight car. 
To avoid a very bad bit of pave in the most 
direct way, Louis, the chauffeur, made a 
wide detour through Schaarbeek. Passing 
a building that stood back from the street, 
I noticed that something was taking place. 
I told Louis to turn around and stop in a 
good position to see. It was a public build- 
ing of some kind, a school I think, that had 
been taken over by the occupying military 
authorities. Three sides of the open space 
were lined by soldiers. German officers de- 
scended the steps, walked across the picture, 
turned, walked back again, and reascended 
the steps. Then more German officers, then 
some Bulgarian officers who had just arrived 
in Brussels, then more Germans. In the 
74 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

middle of the scene was a little line of ragged 
Belgian men, women and children. They 
had been gathered from the near-by streets. 
They seemed much frightened. Appeared 
a dozen under officers and privates carrying 
loaves of bread. These they thrust into the 
hands of the people in the line, while in a 
corner the clicking camera recorded the 
touching scene, to be shown in Germany and 
Austria and in neutral countries throughout 
the world, of "Kind Hearted Prussians 
Feeding the Belgian Populace." That was 
what the camera showed. But what it did 
not show were the fields of Kansas and 
Manitoba, or the ships of the American 
Commission that had brought the wheat that 
had been converted into the flour from which 
those loaves were made, or the American 
dollar sign indicating who had paid for the 
loaves, or even the Belgian agents to whom 
the distribution was the morning and even- 
75 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

ing work. That day these agents had been 
thrust aside and their bread taken from 
them. "On this occasion," they were told, 
"our soldiers will perform your task. You 
can leave the loaves and go home." When 
I returned to the C. R. B. office for lunch, 
I thought I had a story to tell. I was dis- 
appointed when my description fell rather 
flat. "We have heard all about it before," 
men informed me. "That comedy is being 
staged from time to time all over Belgium. 
We don't mind their taking pictures but we 
wish they would leave our bread alone." 

It was some such sort of a stage setting, 
on a wider and more varied scale, that was 
prepared and manipulated early in the war 
for the benefit of a group of influential 
American correspondents. The older men 
of the C. R. B. would laugh if a newcomer 
quoted in favor of the Germans some of the 
testimony that had been offered in all sin- 
76 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

cerity and honesty by those "eye-witnesses." 
The immortal Tartarin of Tarascon, on the 
eve of his ascent of the Jungfrau, listened 
to the voice of Bompard, and was persuaded 
that Switzerland did not exist. The Amer- 
ican journalists, taken along a path that had 
been arranged for their reception — a path 
of untouched villages and well coached peas- 
ants — were almost ready to cry aloud to the 
world, "Belgium! There is no Belgium!" 



77 



II 

GEEMAN OFFICERS 

**T Tf THAT are the German officers 
\ \ like? What is their behavior 
in Belgium? What is their version of the 
origin of the war, and what are their ex- 
planations of the amazing manner in which 
the Imperial Government has conducted it?" 
These are questions which have been asked 
repeatedly. During the time that I was in 
Brussels I met perhaps twenty German offi- 
cers. I talked with eight or ten of them. 
They seemed quite willing to be led into a 
discussion of the war, but we had been 
warned to avoid the subject as a dangerous 
one. Consequently for my impressions of 
the German officers and their mental process 
78 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

I am drawing mostly on what has been told 
me by other men of the C. R. B., especially 
the men of the North of France. But there 
are certain memories which we all of us 
took away, no matter how slight and short- 
lived was the acquaintance. We recall, save 
in one or two cases, an artificial politeness, 
an attempt at bonhomie which hardly con- 
cealed the sneer. " 'What is German mili- 
tarism?' I will tell you. It is order, disci- 
pline, obedience." That is always and ever 
the refrain. That covers all, explains all, 
justifies all. To them these virtues exist 
nowhere else in the world. We, in particu- 
lar, are barbarians. There had been some 
slight infraction of one of the ninety and 
nine thousand rules that govern life in Bel- 
gium by a member of the C. R. B. and at 
the headquarters in the Place Royale Major 
B. was storming at Sperry of California. 
Sperry was not the offender, but as he was 
79 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

the passport man, official abuse usually de- 
scended upon his head. But a sense of 
humor had Sperry, and he bore it all stoi- 
cally. *'You come from a country and a 
wild Western State where you have no laws," 
so ran the indictment. "You don't under- 
stand what laws are or what they are made 
for. Don't you know there is a war?" "It 
seems to me," replied Sperry softly, "that I 
have heard of it." "Heard of it!" Major 
B. exploded. "I think we have heard of it. 
We have lost a million men." 

Maverick was one of the last men to be 
recalled from his North of France post. 
Jokingly he told the German officers that 
he was thinking of trying to get a commis- 
sion in the British army. "Don't do that," 
they said; "if you must do something, try 
for one in the French army. Then we 
might possibly be friends again some time in 
the future." One day when the crisis was 
80 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

becoming acute, Maverick imparted a con- 
fidence to his officer. With a perfectly- 
straight face he told him that he had received 
information that the Government at Wash- 
ington had decided to recall the United 
States Consul to Hoboken. Although he 
had lived some years in England — perhaps 
by reason of that — and had crossed the At- 
lantic, the ofiicer received the news with per- 
fect gravity. "The step," he acknowledged, 
'^indicates the seriousness of the situation." 
As hours passed, however, his countenance 
took on a puzzled look. He maintained a 
persistent, almost gloomy, silence. He 
communed wonderingly with himself. 
Sometime in the afternoon of the following 
day a light broke over his face. "I have 
just discovered," he said, "that the United 
States Consul to Hoboken is a joke." 

Entering the Representatives Room in 
the offices it would be often to find one of 
81 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

the chairs occupied by a uniform. The face 
would be that of a stranger. The stiff in- 
troduction announced the visitor as Ritt 
Meister Blank or Oberlieutenant Dash. 
That was another matter. At times the 
smile was hard to restrain. There flashed 
a dozen details of description, quotations of 
conversation, imparted to me of evenings be- 
fore the inadequate hearth fire of No. 
126. It might be Fletcher's officer, the one 
with whom "Luke" had spent four months 
at Longwy, and made that trip into Ger- 
many, the hero of such and such an episode 
in the Hotel Adlon in Berlin. Again the 
scrutinizing monocle and the highly ex- 
tended hand brought to mind "Oh, you are 
the guy they describe as all right from your 
head up and from your feet down." Or 
the mental observation would be "Well, you 
certainly don't look as if you hated your- 
self, but Phil Potter says that you are not 
82 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

such a bad sort, and if Phil Potter says that, 
I will reserve judgment." The situation 
was one where the American delegate, espe- 
cially when, as in my case, he was a late 
arrival, was always at a decided advantage. 
There was one officer, met this way, who in- 
sisted on talking during the ten minutes we 
were alone together, of Canada and the ob- 
vious opportunities of the United States in 
that direction. Why had we not taken ad- 
vantage of them. England's hands were 
busy, the Dominion heavily weakened, such 
a chance might never come again. When I 
told him that one old woman with a broom- 
stick at the frontier would be ample military 
protection for Canada so far as any aggres- 
sion on the part of the United States was 
concerned, he looked at me sharply, and 
changed the subject. I was either deep, or 
an utter fool. 

There are certain ones among the German 
83 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

officers that I met that I particularly recall. 
At headquarters, Major B. and Captain S., 
the latter a little man with searching, sus- 
picious eyes, perhaps made so by his scrutiny 
of every new American delegate who came 
in. There was Graf von M., of the Prus- 
sian branch of the famous Austrian family. 
He was extremely handsome, of a Rupert 
of Hentzau type, and perhaps personally 
the German officer in Brussels the most 
hated by the Belgians. Among his exploits 
was the having sent to prison in Germany 
for three months two young girls belonging 
to excellent Belgian families. He had tried 
to speak to them on the street one evening 
and they had referred to him as a sale Boche, 
There was the monocled Captain Graf von 
G., typically Prussian in his morgue. There 
was Captain N., in former days one of the 
heads of the Hamburg- American office in 
London. He had an English wife, and chil- 
84 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

dren, with whom he had had no communi- 
cation since July, 1914. There was Cap- 
tain W., himself half English and cursing 
England with a vehemence that singled him 
out even among men whose souls were so at- 
tuned to the Hymn of Hate. There was 
Captain B., Tie of the duck legs, the pleas- 
antest memory of all, of whom more later. 
There was Oberlieutenant L., who was to 
take us out of Belgium, across Germany, 
and dehver us over to Swiss soil. There was 
Oberlieutenant F., dancing and debonair. 
I can see him now, executing that jig step 
in the great dining room of the Palace Hotel 
our last night in Brussels. Also I know 
what the morning brought — what so many 
other mornings had brought. He would 
wake up in bed with nothing on but his Hus- 
sar boots. Remorse and good resolutions 
would be born of the aching head and the 
trembling fingers. He would reach out for 
85 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

the handglass that was always with him, 
and studying the reflection with melancholy 
eyes would murmur, "Finkey, Finkey, you 
naughty Hun!" 

Not everywhere had the invaders pene- 
trated. There were great houses in the 
provinces that had been spared, and at which 
many of the American delegates were roy- 
ally entertained. There were house parties 
in the Ardennes, in Limbourg, in Luxem- 
bourg. The element of romance was not 
entirely lacking. One or two of the Ameri- 
cans had acquired Belgian wives. At the 
time of our departure there were engage- 
ments in the air. One of the weekly meet- 
ings in the Brussels office was held at a time 
when the complications due to the severance 
of relations impaired our future usefulness 
in the work, but when it was not yet a cer- 
tainty that there would be actual war. The 
Director, outlining the general situation, 
86 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

pointed out the necessity of leaving the 
country, but added, with a meaning smile, 
that if there were any men who for personal 
reasons wished to stay behind they were to 
tell him privately. Two or three delegates 
with exceedingly guilty countenances were 
the only ones who did not participate in the 
laughter. To the everlasting credit of the 
C. R. B. it is to be recorded that, with one 
or two exceptions, very early in the war, 
neither Belgian hospitality nor Belgian con- 
fidences was ever abused. With a sense of 
absolute security a host would impart to his 
American guests information that divulged 
would have meant for him a German prison 
or worse. He would have been far more 
guarded with a Belgian who did not belong 
to his own intimate circle. On these Bel- 
gians of wealth and position the burden of 
the war had been heavy. But the first sym- 
pathy is not for them. They managed to 
87 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

continue to live in material comfort. Ar- 
rowsmith, dining in a country house, ex- 
pressed his appreciation of a certain wine. 
"I suppose," he said, "that you have very 
little of it left." The host shook his head 
sacily. "Unfortunately, there remain but 
ten thousand bottles." 

The lot of the Belgians of the higher 
classes would have been easier, the restric- 
tions fewer, had they been willing to receive 
the invaders socially. "I have brought my 
evening clothes," explained many a young 
German officer, his first day in the household 
on which he was billeted. He was pained 
and puzzled at the lack of response. The 
German ofi[icers were always wondering why 
the Belgians did not Hke them. They had 
been received in Belgian houses before the 
war. Why should such a triviality as an 
invasion make any difference? The Ameri- 
can in H. G. Wells's "Mr. Britling Sees It 
88 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

Through" said that he had always consid- 
ered war as a kind of game in which two 
picked teams did the fighting while other 
people looked on. To listen to many of the 
German officers you would have thought 
that this war had been conducted that way. 
They talked about its end as of the finish of a 
knightly joust, carried out with all courtesy 
and ceremony, after which victor and van- 
quished sit down for wassail at the groan- 
ing board. "If it were over to-morrow I 
would be in Paris in a week. I have not 
been there since 1911. I want to see the 
boulevards and eat filet of sole a la Mar- 
guery at Marguery's," said one. Others 
liked to picture themselves in Regent Street 
of Piccadilly in the near future, no longer as 
conquerors, but as welcome guests. All ex- 
pected to take up the threads of cosmopoli- 
tan life as they were before August, 1914. 
They could not understand why the French 
89 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

did not like them. "Do you think that you 
and the French will ever be friends?" I once 
rather maliciously asked the best of them, 
Captain B. He shook his head rather sadly. 
*'I am afraid not, and we have always 
wanted to be friends with them, and have 
tried so hard." And he believed it! 

They were puzzled by America's lack of 
sympathy. They wanted explanations and 
nagged in their persistence. There were 
times when the strain of silence was hard. 
"I wish," said Fletcher of California, after 
long restraint, "that you wouldn't talk the 
way you do about our President. You 
haven't heard me say anything about the 
Kaiser. And, after all, we elected our 
President, while you had your Kaiser wished 
on you." Brand Whitlock told me that 
again and again those questions "Why don't 
your people like us? Why are you not on 
our side?" had been thrust on him. Finally 
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INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

one day he spoke out : "Because you seem to 
have the faculty of always doing the wrong 
thing, just what will grate and hurt the most. 
Take the Lusitania, for example. It was 
the one ship not flying the American flag 
that you should have not selected for destruc- 
tion if you wished to retain our friendship. 
No other transatlantic liner of England or 
France would have been the same. You 
might have sunk the Mauretania^ the JLusi- 
tanias twin sister, without rousing half the 
feehng. But the Lusitania had been al- 
ways regarded as sentimentally an Ameri- 
can boat. Every traveling American had 
crossed on her or had relatives or close 
friends who had done so. The torpedo that 
sent her to the bottom of the Irish sea struck 
us to the heart." 

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg has 
been, since August, 1914<, subjected to the 
annoyances and hardships of war, but not to 
91 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

its horrors. Possessing a standing army 
only slightly larger than the standing army 
that was cuffed and kicked by Namgay 
Doola in the Kipling story, it formally pro- 
tested against the passage of the Germans. 
Without undue violence a platoon of the 
gray-green clad men lifted the standing 
army blocking the road over the hedge into 
an adjoining field, and after a few seconds' 
delay, the hosts of the Kaiser marched on. 
Luxembourg bowed to the inevitable. Had 
not the protest saved the national honor? 
The occupation was irksome, residences 
'^borrowed" for the use of invaders of ex- 
alted rank had been left in a state positively 
indescribable, but there was very little loot- 
ing, and no burning or bloodshed. To Lux- 
embourg the German officers were always 
pointing as an example of what Belgium's 
lot would have been had it yielded to Ger- 
man demands. Once our Minister to the 
92 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

Hague, Dr. Henry Van Dyke, paid a visit 
to the Grand Duchy. With that almost 
child-hke eagerness for praise that is curi- 
ously characteristic, the Germans angled for 
his expressions of approval. Finally came 
the direct question. "What do the people 
have to say of the behavior of our soldiers?" 

"It is not," rephed Dr. Van Dyke with 
icy politeness, "to your behavior that they 
object. It is to your presence." 

To one fault the German authorities 
seemed to be charitably lenient. Months 
before my arrival in Belgium there had been 
a row involving one of the C. R. B. dele- 
gates. I never knew the details of the epi- 
sode, but for a time it threatened to end 
very seriously for the American. The 
Minister hurried to Headquarters in the hope 
of smoothing over the affair. But there was 
the doctrine of blood and iron in the smash- 
ing of the heavy fist on the table. "He has 
93 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

a German officer insulted. To prison he 
must go. It is a chose jugee" Finally, to 
Mr. Whitlock it seemed as if the last card 
had been played, that further pleading would 
be a waste of precious time. He rose to 
leave. "The fact is," he conceded, "the 
young man was drunk." Over the hard, 
set face of the German there came a change. 
The jaw relaxed into something like a smile. 
"Why did you not acquaint me with that 
important — that exceedingly important fact 
before?" he asked. "Now I understand. 
Young men must have their pleasure. If he 
was drunk it is another matter. To prison 
he shall not go." 



94 



Ill 

MOEE GERMAN OFFICERS 

THE German officers as well as the 
German soldiers were frank in their 
expressions of disappointment at the failure 
of the Kaiser's peace overtures. They 
maintained that the war was really over, that 
Germany had won it, that the crushing of 
Roumania was the coup de grace. It was 
only the criminal obstinacy of the Entente 
AUies that was prolonging the bloodshed. 
Provoked Germany had dealt the blow in 
self-defense. The Kaiser was the most 
peace-loving man in the world. There 
never would have been any war had it not 
been for the scheming of British tradesmen, 
jealous of the rising German power and 
95 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

commerce. The destruction of Louvain 
and other cities in Belgium and the North 
of France was justified. The Generals of 
Louis XIV had burned villages in the Pala- 
tinate. "But that was more than two hun- 
dred years ago." "True, but to understand 
Germany, you must think in centuries." 

Of course it was impossible to know just 
how deep and widespread was the actual 
spirit of unrest among the German officers 
and men. One day in March, Meert of the 
Brabant Department, appeared at the 
luncheon table with a curious story. In the 
tram that had brought him to the office there 
had been a German private, the only uni- 
form in the car. He was drunk, maudhnly 
and sentimentally drunk. He was exceed- 
ingly anxious to impart his sorrows and his 
disappointments to the Belgians about him. 
So in French, with a very German flavor, 
he kept repeating over and over: ''Le Kaiser 
96 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

a dit que nous sommes victorieuse. Ce n'est 
pas vrai. Nous sommes foutus/' "The 
Kaiser says that we are victorious. It is not 
true. We are done for." 

One of the C. R. B. men in touch with 
Antwerp — ^was it Gardner Richardson — was 
in that city when the news of the Russian 
revolution came. At a near-by table in the 
restaurant where he was dining was a group 
of middle aged German officers. There 
came in to join them a very much excited 
young officer waving a German newspaper 
and pointing to the head lines. But instead 
of the expected enthusiasm he was greeted 
with grumpy silence. "What is the mat- 
ter? Are you not pleased with the news?" 
asked the newcomer. "Pleased" ! grumbled 
one of the older men. "Why should we be 
pleased? The first thing you know we will 
be seeing that kind of thing in Berlin." 

From the military point of view, the Ger- 
97 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

man officers were profoundly impressed by 
General Nivelle's Verdun attack of last au- 
tumn, when the French, in the space of fifty 
minutes, retook what the Germans had won 
by five months of incessant labor and the sac- 
rifice of hundreds of thousands of lives. It 
was to them the action of the war, but they 
ascribed it partially to luck, and were sure 
that it would never recur, for, they said, there 
has never been before and there could never 
be again such marvelous coordination be- 
tween the infantry, the artillery and the air 
forces. "Our men were powerless, over- 
whelmed, they could do nothing but surren- 
der." Later I was to hear this verdict cor- 
roborated from the other side, from the lips 
of American Ambulance drivers in Paris. 
The French infantry, the Americans said, 
really had nothing to do except to direct the 
prisoners to the rear. Their airmen and 
their guns had made resistance impossible. 
98 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

The very ease of the advance was the cause 
of the only losses. The men unintentionally 
disobeyed orders. They were told to stop 
at a certain point, but in their eagerness they 
went beyond. Many of them fell under the 
firing of their own artillery. 

Of all the German ofBcers with whom the 
men of the C. R. B. were thrown in con- 
tact, unquestionably the most genuinely 
liked was Captain B. The eighteenth of last 
February three or four of us with B. were 
lunching in the Taverne Royale. After 
many toasts, we pledged to meet for an early 
morning supper at Jack's in New York 
February 18th, 1918. I have often won- 
dered since if that appointment is kept just 
what will the conditions be. Every one 
who had been associated with B. spoke of 
his fairness and his kindness. He had some- 
thing of the politeness of the heart. Under 
his good manners you never detected the 
99 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

sneer. I am sure it was not there. In that 
he was the exception. But despite his uni- 
form, of which he was immensely vain, — 
the girls in the Bodegas used to amuse them- 
selves hugely playing upon his weakness, — 
and the clanking sword which was too long 
for his short legs, and over which he was al- 
ways stumbling, he never gave the impres- 
sion of being a soldier. War did not disturb 
him much, at least not after the middle of 
the day. The ten o'clock in the morning 
bottle of champagne had started him on the 
road to complete beatitude. Reenforce- 
ments were constantly coming up. By two 
or three o'clock in the afternoon he was 
dreaming that he was in Paris, sipping a 
liqueur at the corner table of the Cafe de 
la Paix, and looking down the Avenue of 
the Opera. Leach of California was the 
delegate at one time stationed in Lille. B. 
was his officer. The city was too near the 
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INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

English guns and they Kved at Tournai. 
Leach used to say that one of his most ex- 
acting duties was, when they were riding to- 
gether in the motor, nudging B. in the ribs 
in order to inform him when to return a sa- 
lute. There would be an automatic stiffen- 
ing up, the hand would go to the helmet, 
then drop, and in a second the officer would 
again be in a peaceful, happy slumber. 
Once an opera company from Berlin played 
in the Lille Opera House. The first night 
the German officers attended in a body. 
The English, eight or ten miles away, had 
learned of the performance, and dropped a 
shell within a hundred yards of the theater. 
Captain B. invited Leach to attend the per- 
formance for the second night. Leach 
promptly accepted the invitation. All day 
long the officer amused himself by picturing 
the possible, or probable, explosion. It was 
to be wrought, of course, by a shell made in 
101 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

America. "I drink to that shell," he said 
again and again. By the time the curtain 
went up, he had passed away to a realm be- 
yond the reach of worry. "He was smiling 
in his sleep. There I sat by his side in the 
box, the only civilian in the house, waiting 
every minute for the crash to come." In 
Paris, one morning in April, Leach called to 
me from a table as I was passing the Cafe 
de la Paix. He was greatly pleased. He 
had got what he wanted — Leach was a sur- 
geon — a position with the American Hos- 
pital Corps that would enable him to go up 
close behind the British and French fronts. 
He would now have an opportunity given to 
few men. He would see the same country 
that he had seen before but this time from 
the other side of the fighting line. As he 
talked of his prospects, his face broke into a 
whimsical smile. He explained: "I just 
want to see B.'s little duck legs scampering 
102 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

in my direction. I want to hear him crying 
*Kameraden! Kameraden!' Sure I'll give 
him the glad hand." 



103 



IV 

BEYOND THE MAGIC DOOR — WAR BOOKS 
AND OTHERS — THE OLD AFFICHES 

PERHAPS some of the happiest hours 
in Belgium were those evenings be- 
yond the magic door, when the temperature 
was in a comparatively kindly mood, when 
only one or two of us were at home, and 
we could browse among the bookshelves that 
lined three sides of the living room of No. 
126. There were the heavily bound books 
of the owner of the house, books in three lan- 
guages denoting his cosmopolitanism of 
taste, and there were the accumulations of 
two years of American occupation. Many 
times, in many places, I had pored over the 
pages of "Vanity Fair." Now, to take 
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INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

down from a shelf the "novel without a hero" 
in gorgeous binding, to turn to certain famil- 
iar chapters, brought a new sensation. I 
re-read the pages describing the great ball 
on the eve of the battle of Waterloo, the 
lines describing how William Dobbin tried 
to drag George Osborne away from the rout, 
whispering "The enemy has crossed the 
Sambre. Our left is abeady engaged. 
We are to march in three hours." That 
very morning perhaps, I had, accompanying 
Sperry, climbed the actual staircase of the 
scene, past men of the German Landsturm, 
and lines of waiting Belgians. The quaint, 
awkward drawing in Thackeray's own hand 
showed Major and Mrs. O'Dowd at the 
flower market in the Grand Place. By 
hardly a stone the square of June, 1815, dif- 
fered from the square I had thrice crossed, 
that same day, almost one hundred and two 
years later. My eyes were skimming the 
105 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

sentences telling how, through the open 
windows, came a dull distant sound over the 
sun lighted roofs to the southward, how 
"God defend us, it's cannon"! Mrs. O'Dowd 
cried, and how a thousand pale and anxious 
faces might be seen looking from other case- 
ments. The reading was interrupted. 
Leach, sitting six feet away, had laid down 
his own book. "Listen," he said. "Did you 
catch that? It's the third time this evening 
I've heard the guns around Lille." 

There were on the shelves the solid tomes 
of history and poetry, which did not receive 
any great amount of attention; there were 
on the table heavy atlases, and sprawling 
across the most comfortable sofas loose 
maps, on which we moved about little paper 
pins, indicating the changes in Roumania, 
Persia, and on the Russian, Italian, and 
Western fronts of which the latest news re- 
ceived had apprised us. There were the 
106 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

piles of copies of London "Punch," the lat- 
est issue one of July, 1914. There was a 
varied collection of French novels, with 
rather luridly illustrated covers, books of the 
type of the sprightly "Famille Cardinal," 
which would introduce to American readers 
a M. Ludovic Halevy surprisingly differ- 
ent from the one they know as the author of 
"L. Abbe Constantin." But there was one 
set of little books which drew us back from 
the happier past to the grim realities of the 
present. 

There were two books that I had read at 
home in the earlier days of the war that 
dealt, in what might be called the Jules 
Verne manner, with Germanic dreams and 
aspirations of conquest. One was "Frank- 
reich's Ende in Jahre 19 — '' published in 
1912, and the other "Hindenberg's March 
into London," which is said to have sold four 
million copies in Germany in a few months. 
107 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

Those books had reminded one of Frank R. 
Stockton's "The Great War Syndicate." 
They were so different. Mr. Stockton's 
book dealt with an imaginary war between 
Great Britain and the United States, end- 
ing in a decisive American triimaph. The 
tale was designed simply to amuse, but its 
wide popularity was of real significance. It 
sold because it was the kind of a book that 
reflected accurately the martial ambitions of 
the American people. It showed our cause 
just. It showed us rising to a great emer- 
gency. It showed us ultimately victorious. 
Best of all it showed us great in victory. 
We exacted no tribute. We burned no 
cities. We obliterated no province. We 
inflicted no humiliation on a gallant foe. 
We implanted no heritage of hate. 

It would take too long to describe in detail 
the two German books mentioned. Briefly, 
the first tells of an imaginary war as a re- 
108 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

suit of which France is absorbed by its con- 
querors and the French race exterminated, 
A dispute about a raiboad in Morocco, com- 
plicated by a "Maine" incident, leads Ger- 
many to declare war. The French armies 
are everywhere easily crushed. Montpel- 
lier is burned to the ground, and Orleans, 
after capture, is made to look like a "dead 
ruin of the Middle Ages." After Paris is 
taken the terms offered by the victors are 
so humiliating that the desperate people 
make a final but unorganized struggle. 
Germany proclaims the annexation of 
France, and puts in force martial law, which 
daily leads to the shooting of hundreds of 
rebels. The women and children who take 
part in the desperate struggle to remove the 
yoke are deported by thousands to Cayenne 
and other penal colonies. 

''Franhreidis Ende in Jahre 19 — ^^ was 
published two years before the first German 
109 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

soldier saw, or imagined, the first sniper in 
eastern Belgium. "Hindenberg's March 
into London" must be judged more leni- 
ently, for it was born in the fever of hate. 
It describes an invasion of England and the 
subjugation of that country by the Kaiser's 
armies, and his fleets of the sea and air. As 
an expression of the national ambitions of 
author and readers it is not a book to which 
one could in strict justice object. A Ger- 
man picturing the spiked helmets masters 
in Trafalgar Square is fair play. That 
prisoners are often lined up against a wall 
and shot is hard, but it is war. It is the 
bloody licking of the lips that amazes the 
American mind. The tragedy of Louvain 
is extolled. "The heart of England will not 
be instructed even by the fate of Belgium," 
a German Major, a hero, instructs his sol- 
ders, "we shall repeat the lesson of Lou- 
vain." In a battle before London the order 
110 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

to take no prisoners is explained, "When 
fighting bestial, snarling scum the German 
soldier observes only the laws of the hunt 
of beasts of prey." 

The two books came to me through the 
medium of English translation. I can not 
be certain that the original text had not in 
places been twisted and distorted. They 
are entitled to every benefit of the doubt. 
But on one of the library shelves of the house 
at 126 Avenue Louise there was a set of 
books containing evidence impossible to con- 
trovert or to discredit. The little volumes, 
in which are collected the experiences of 
German officers and soldiers in Belgium 
and Northern France, carry the imprint of 
the Imperial German Government. The 
seal of ofiicial Germany is on the occasional 
amazing and hideous confession that con- 
firms the spirit of the Bryce Report if any 
such confirmation is necessary. "As we 
111 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

were passing through S. shots were fired 
by the inhabitants. One of our soldiers 
was wounded. We entered and searched 
some of the houses. In one of them we 
found an old woman trying to hide under a 
bed. One of our men ran her through with 
his bayonet. These people must be taught 
a lesson." There is no distortion in that 
translation. "But why," I asked in aston- 
ishment, "do they even let those things be 
printed?" The reply was a shrug. "Son, 
we have been here longer than you have. 
We have given up trying to understand the 
workings of the German mind." 

Then there were the affiches of the past, 
infinitely more interesting reading than the 
affiches of the hour. There was almost a 
complete set of these papers on the shelves of 
the library at No. 126. Day by day they 
had told the story of the war as the Germans 
had wished it told to the people of the in- 
112 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

vaded country. If the communique of the 
morning happened to be particularly de- 
pressing, if it suggested that the Entente 
cause was collapsing at all points ; to bring 
reassurance it was necessary only to take 
down from the shelves the documents relat- 
ing to what has become since known as the 
Battle of the Marne. There was the ring 
of sincerity in the exultant sentences record- 
ing the beginning of that conflict. Every- 
where the German arms triumphant. The 
handful of British flung into the sea. The 
French crumpled up, receding in hopeless 
panic. The capture of Paris only a matter 
of hours. Then there came a subtle change 
in tone. The battle was still raging. The 
Kaiser's armies were displaying a heroism 
unparalleled in history. All was going well. 
The Russians had been defeated in a great 
battle. With the issue of every new com- 
munique the Eastern front assumed a 
113 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

greater importance; the battlefield of the 
west to be shrouded in deeper obscurity. 
But reading in the dusk of a midwinter day 
I could see through the veil that, thirty 
months before, had been drawn before Bel- 
gian eyes. There was Joffre, flinging out 
his General Order announcing that the re- 
treat was at an end. There were Gallieni's 
men being rushed from Paris in taxi-cabs. 
There was the new French army striking un- 
expectedly in on Von Kluck's right, caus- 
ing the eventual attenuation of the Ger- 
man line, like an elastic stretched too thin. 
There was Foch, sending to Headquarters 
his laconic message "My right wing is shat- 
tered. My left wing is in retreat. I am at- 
tacking with my center"; and later, perceiv- 
ing the moment of dislocation in the enemy's 
line, ordering the advance that drove the 
Prussian Guard into the marshes. Then, 
the gray-green host in retreat, with the bark- 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

ing "seventy-fives" whipping them onward. 
In a similar vein, in other old affiches, was 
the story of Verdun. It would be difficult to 
say how many thousand bottles of wine were 
consumed by German officers in Brussels 
celebrating the announced fall of the citadel. 



115 



louvain: thirty months later 

ONE German headquarters was in 
what had been the Hotel Bellevue et 
Flandre near the Royal Palace. In that 
hotel I had stayed at the time of my first and 
only previous visit to Brussels many years 
before. Little had I dreamed then what the 
purpose of my next visit to the edifice was to 
be. When, a fe^v days after arrival, I was 
to pass before the official scrutiny, Sperry 
advised me. "They want to give you the 
*once over,' " was the way that he expressed 
it. "It is not necessary for you to let them 
know that you have written anything. 
They shy at the idea of writers on the Com- 
mission. When they asked me what you 
116 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

did at home I said I understood that you 
were some kind of a business man." I un- 
derstood. So after having been inspected 
stiffly by Major B., who, assuring me of his 
high regret at his inabihty to grant me an 
audience, turned me over to Captain S., I 
quite truthfully informed the latter that for 
many years previous to volunteering for the 
relief work, I had been connected with a 
business house that had its offices at Fourth 
Avenue and Thirtieth Street in New York 
City. 

As a result of that inspection, I was pro- 
vided, some days later, with an official yel- 
low document. It was my certificate of per- 
mission to ride in a motor car on any road 
in the Brabant province. Beyond the bor- 
ders of the province I could not go. But 
Brabant is the heart of Belgium, and within 
its confines were enacted some of the most 
stirring and terrible scenes in the tragic 
117 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

August of 1914. The memory of some of 
those scenes seems to be seared into the 
brains of many of those who witnessed the 
coming of the invaders. Americans who in 
other days visited the Battlefield of Water- 
loo may recall a little hotel at the junction 
of the roads at Braine L'AUeud, about a mile 
from the Lion Monument. The building is 
either the one occupied by Victor Hugo 
when he was planning the marvelous de- 
scription of the battle that is incorporated 
in "Les Miserables," or it is the building 
next to it. The first Sunday in March, 
1917, Curtis and Leach, bound by motor for 
Charleroi, dropped me at what is popularly 
known as the Battlefield of Waterloo — the 
village of Waterloo two or three miles nearer 
Brussels, actually had nothing to do with the 
battle — and after two hours of walking I sat 
down for a brief rest in the Braine L AUeud 
hotel. It was a voluble proprietor who 
118 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

greeted me, deploring the lack of custom, 
the inability to procure food to sell or even 
to eat, the general unkindness of fate. 
When he paused for lack of breath I asked 
him if he had seen the Germans come. In- 
stantly his demeanor changed. Into his 
eyes crept reminiscent fear. As he de- 
scribed he acted the scene. "Listen, Mon- 
sieur. I had hidden everything in the cel- 
lar. I had closed all the doors and windows, 
and was looking out through the slits in the 
shutters. Like this. Here. They came 
down that road. I could see them rounding 
the turn. They crossed the square. With 
their gun butts they pounded on the door. 
They cried 'Open.' Oh! Mon Dieu!" In 
the narrative the man's face had become wet 
with the sweat of panic. 

With Louis the chauffeur as my guide, I 
traveled over many roads to the east, north 
and west. There was not a town, or the 
119 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

charred ruin of what had once been a town, 
of which Louis did not know the recent his- 
tory. His former employers having fled be- 
fore the invasion and sought refuge in Eng- 
land, Louis had been absorbed into the serv- 
ice of the C. R. B. From time to time, in 
a Brussels street or along a country road, a 
Landsturm man would step out, displaying 
a red flag. It was the demand to see our 
papers. ''Sale BocheT Louis would growl, 
twirling his blond mustache and bringing 
the car to a stop. There was a world of 
meaning in Louis's ^'Sale BocheT 

Louvain, I have found, has an appeal to 
many thousand Americans to whom the 
names of other stricken Belgian cities are 
unknown. "Did you go to Louvain and is 
it really true?" have been among the first 
questions. How do I know? I was not 
there August 19, 1914, the day the Germans 
entered, nor was I there the night of August 
120 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

25, when the Beast broke loose. I did not 
see the red reflection in the sky, or the civil- 
ians being led to execution, or the soldiers 
punishing snipers, according to the German 
version, or, in blind panic, replying to one 
another's volleys, which is the claim of the 
Belgians. I can say that I was in Louvain 
for the first time March 10, 1917, and that I 
saw the evidence of a work masterly in its 
system. Whatever I may believe I don't 
know whose work it was. Perhaps Belgium 
stole the watch, and, the car being crowded, 
slipped it in the Kaiser's pocket. 

We entered Louvain through a narrow, 
ill-paved street of the poorer section, swung 
into the Rue de Bruxelles, past the Hotel de 
Ville, then along the Rue de la Station to 
the railway station; thus bisecting the city. 
We circled the boulevard southward for a 
distance, and then turned in again through 
the tortuous streets. Had the evidence 
121 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

been allowed to remain as a permanent 
warning? The charred ruins were left as 
they were when the ashes first grew cold. 
The few new structm^es that had been 
erected, near the railway station, were of 
what might be termed the Coney Island 
school of architecture. Of course no one 
thinks of taking the chance of rebuilding in 
an enduring form. In the center of a 
blighted street a single house absolutely un- 
scarred. "Une maison allemande," Louis 
would explain. The Church of St. Pierre, 
the University, once the most famous in Eu- 
rope, with its library filled with precious 
manuscript had been consumed by the 
flames. The late Richard Harding Davis, 
in his description of the burning of Louvain, 
pictured General Lutwitz, in pantomime 
sweeping his hand across the table and say- 
ing: "The Hotel de Ville was a beautiful 
building. It is a pity it must be destroyed." 
122 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

But it was not destroyed. Untouched, un- 
scarred, it stands to-day, the sole important 
survivor of that night of horrors. 



123 



VI 

"to understand Germany" 

WHAT were the relations existing 
between the German officers in 
Belgium and the occupied French depart- 
ments, and the C. R. B. men with whom 
they were often so much and so long in con- 
tact? How did they get along? I do not 
think that it was ever possible for the Ger- 
man to understand the American, or the 
American the German. There are prob- 
ably to-day many officers who, recalling the 
association, are perfectly convinced of their 
own great personal popularity with the dele- 
gates. "Unless they are absolute ingrates 
and barbarians it can not possibly be other- 
wise," is the probable line of mental argu- 
ment. "Did I not treat him with high es- 
124 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

teem? Was I not always correct in my de- 
portment? Naturally I took the bedroom 
and the office, and gave him the camp couch 
and wooden table in the hall. Anything but 
the best would be unbecoming an officer bear- 
ing His Majesty's commission. Did we not 
together consume oh, so many bottles of 
wine?" All of which is perfectly true. It 
was not at American suffering that he had 
displayed such callous indifference. The 
stricken street through which the motor car 
raced was not one of a village of New Eng- 
land or Virginia. Outwardly cordial the re- 
lations between officer and delegate almost 
always were. In convivial moments they 
were even familiar. One pair, after the 
American's second drink and the German's 
twentieth, addressed each other as "Cap" 
and "Lizzie." Had they been shipwrecked 
men on a remote island they might have be- 
come as brothers. But so long as one was 
125 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

the product and embodiment of the Prussian 
military system, and the other was not, there 
was between them a gulf that it was impossi- 
ble to bridge. 

Some of the delegates told that they had 
gone into Belgium pro-German, politically 
at least. Take, as a shining example, the 
case of the man whom I shall call "Kitt." I 
here indulge in prophecy, and venture the 
opinion that he will go far. The time may 
come when magazines will be urging us to 
write our "Recollections" of "Kitt" as we 
knew him in the Bottle. "What an amazing 
amount of ill-digested knowledge he pos- 
sesses" was my comment after two evenings' 
acquaintance. I used the adjective in no 
sense of disparagement, but because I did 
not think that it was humanly possible for 
a man of his age — "Kitt" was about twenty- 
six — to have absorbed so much and to have 
assimilated it. But, "The rest stands, but I 
126 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

want to take back that *ill-digested/ " was 
my retraction of a week later. In No. 126 
Kitt was our translator. The only trouble 
that the Belgique gave us was an occasional 
word and the atrocious quality of the type 
and ink. But the Rotterdamishe Courier 
or the German sheet that came to the house, 
was turned over formally to "Kitt" with 
the admonition to "Go to it!" The Dutch 
newspaper was an excellent one. Some 
mornings it was not to be found in the box. 
We were at once disappointed and pleased; 
for that indicated that there was news of the 
world that the occupying military authori- 
ties did not want known in Belgium. Had 
there been newspapers in other languages 
than Dutch and German, I am sure there 
would have been no hesitation on "Kitt's" 
part. He was always so amiably ready; 
he needed so little urging; that somehow, 
after a time, we ceased to be appreciative. 
127 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

We even began to wonder if he was suiB- 
ciently grateful. After all, were we not 
supplying him with an audience? In addi- 
tion to the newspapers that were delivered 
at the house, there were many others. 
"Kitt's" appetite for print was insatiable. 
In the course of some days he collected a 
copy of every journal that reached Brussels. 
The rights of the street kiosks and railway 
stands had been sold to a German company, 
and German girls had been sent to Belgium 
to take charge of them. "Kitt's" favorite 
diversion was infuriating these girls by ask- 
ing them, in pretended innocence, if they 
understood any German. 

A University of California man, "Kitt" 
had been a "Rhodes" scholar at Oxford 
about to depart with an expedition for re- 
search of some kind in the Near East when 
the war came. Perhaps it was just a touch 
of intellectual intolerance natural to youth, 
128 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

and soon to be outgrown, that had been re- 
sponsible for his early sentiments. The rea- 
sons for an American to be anti-Prussian 
were too obvious. The violation of Bel- 
gium, and the behavior of the invaders on 
Belgium soil, the aggression upon France. 
These were the arguments at the disposal of 
the man in the street. It behooved the dis- 
passionate historian to ignore them and to 
go deeper. So "Kitt" looked beyond; he 
saw Germany baulked in her scheme for the 
Bagdad railway, he saw German merchants 
subtly discriminated against in Morocco, 
while the English and French were playing 
into each other's hands, he saw a British 
tyranny over the seas which, if benevolent, 
was no less a tyranny. That was the "Kitt" 
who went into Belgium; it was not the 
"Kitt" of the winter and spring of 1917. 
What he felt in the later days was reflected 
in his face when he told the pathetic story 
129 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

of the farthest flung outposts of the C. R. B., 
the group of great hearted French women, 
who, through the long months, had remained 
in their village within sight of the spire of 
Rheims Cathedral, in hourly peril from the 
French guns, in order to take care of the 
little children. 

Personally I do not for a moment pretend 
that I was ever strictly neutral. I do not 
see how neutrality of feeling on the part of 
an American was ever humanly possible. 
But I do say that, never since the beginning 
of the war, had I ever been so nearly neu- 
tral; never had my sentiments towards the 
German nation been so kindly, as in the au- 
tumn of 1916, on the eve of my departure. 
In the first place I had given to the Commis- 
sion for Relief in Belgium my pledge of 
neutrality of speech and action, and I meant 
to keep that pledge honestly. Then the hot 
indignation roused by the events of August, 
130 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

1914, the passionate bitterness at the murder 
of the peaceful Americans sent down with 
the JLusitania, had been softened by the 
passage of time. The German govern- 
ment's plan of ruthless indiscriminate under- 
sea warfare was then not to be suspected. 
"You will probably," Will Irwin said to me 
one day, "be paired off in some small town 
with a German officer. If you are lucky 
you will find him a very decent chap, who 
will be just as earnest as you are in the work 
of getting food for the people for whom you 
will be responsible." From other sources I 
heard stories indicating the cordial relations 
that often existed between the American 
delegates and their companions in the 
Kaiser's gray-green. One American had 
been taken on a trip down the Rhine. In 
another case a German officer, about to be 
married, carried his American back with him 
through the hnes, to act as his best man. I 
131 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

have a very good club friend who, coming 
to this country many years ago, as a member 
of the stock company of the German theater 
in Irving Place, New York, soon acquired a 
perfect command of English, and in time be- 
came one of the most highly esteemed actors 
of the English speaking stage. "I hope," 
he said one evening a few days before I 
sailed, ''that what you see in Belgium will 
make you come back with feelings of real 
kindliness for my people." Then and there 
I gave him my word that I would do my best 
to try to understand them sympathetically. 
Scrupulously I refused to take part in any 
conversation based on hostility to the Ger- 
man cause. As an American neutral going 
to Belgium, the spirit of noblesse oblige de- 
manded that. If there was any C. R. B. 
delegate who did less I never knew him. 
Some of them, as has been said, even went 
in to the Bottle pro-German. But no 
132 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

American delegate of my time ever came out 
of Belgium pro-German. And that, I 
think, constitutes a tremendous indictment. 
"To understand Germany you must think 
in centuries," were the words with which all 
adverse criticism was swept away. Often 
the words were emphasized with the heavily 
banging fist. I came to understand the 
point of view ; but I always wanted to offer a 
slight amendment. To my mind it should 
have been: "To understand the Germans 
you must always keep the centuries in mind." 
You must see the marvelous organization of 
the twentieth century obedient to the con- 
science, the morals, the ideals of the thir- 
teenth or fourteenth. You must under- 
stand the vastness of the gulf across which 
the "High Well Born" once glanced at the 
peasant, and the latter's unquestioning, ox- 
like acceptance of the position assigned him. 
"What are to be the future duties of the peo- 
133 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

pie of the conquered districts — of Poland, 
Belgium, and Northern France?" was a 
question of 1915. It was the voice of the 
German professor that framed the reply. 
"To pay taxes to the Imperial Government, 
to serve in the army, and to keep their jaws 
tight shut." Precisely the idea of Fred- 
erick the Great and of his military mad 
father, that monarch whose agents went 
about Europe beguiling or kidnaping 
likely looking men for his Guard. 

At times there came glimpses that car- 
ried back beyond the wars of Frederick, be- 
yond the age of established Feudal customs, 
of robber barons of the Rhine, of adventure 
seeking knights in shining armor. One day 
in March the search for certain missing 
freight cars carried me to Scharbeek station, 
to Haren Nord, to Ricquier, to the Meu- 
nerie Bruxelloise, to the Trois Fomtaines, 
and finally to the Usine Duche. The ar- 
134 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

rival at the last named mill was just in time 
to see a sound demonstration of practical 
requisitioning. The Germans happened to 
need freight cars and learned that there were 
cars in the sidings of the Usine Duche. 
There was no delaying red tape. An under 
officer with twenty soldiers was sent to the 
task. As the motor car wound in among the 
buildings, from round the corner came the 
sounds of impact and splintering wood. Be- 
neath the weight of the gun butts the heavy 
gate gave away like papier mdche. The 
startled undermanager rushed forward ap- 
pealingly and protestingly. Above his head 
a half dozen gun butts swung menacingly. 
Bayonets gleamed in the direction of his sub- 
ordinates. Then the manager caught sight 
of the C. R. B. ensign flying from the car, 
and rushed forward to register exerted com- 
plaint. "With his own eyes Monsieur the 
American delegate had seen it all. He 
135 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

could bear witness that there had been no 
resistance. It was hard. But one must 
submit, since they were the stronger. But 
why had they not waited until the gate could 
be opened? Why the destruction of prop- 
erty? Why had they been about to strike 
him? Would I report it at Headquarters? 
Would I inform the American Minister? 
Would I spread the news in all the neutral 
countries?" It was a very much agitated, 
violently gesticulating Belgian. To sooth 
him I promised much, though I foresaw the 
smiling shrug; the "I don't see that we can 
do anything," that would meet my story. 
The invaders were rolling away the cars, 
chattering to one another, and leering mock- 
ingly in our direction. There was some- 
thing in the faces that suggested the inheri- 
tance from the remote past, that brought a 
mental picture of hordes of skin-clad men, 
swarming out of the mysterious East, to 
186 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

overrun Western Europe, and to beat at the 
very gates of Imperial Rome. 

Here, too, one time, the pallid nuns 
Called on the Saints in timorous trust. 

While from the hills the ape-faced Huns 
Grinned with the joy of blood and lust. 



137 



VII 

UNDER THE YOKE — THE "lIBRE BELGIQUE" — 
VILLALOBAR — THE COMING OF THE DONS 
— ^DISCRETION 

WHAT are regarded as afflictions 
sometimes prove to be blessings in 
disguise. Standing on the platform of a 
Brussels tram surrounded by German offi- 
cers, I often awoke to a realization that I 
was trying desperately to hum the "Marseil- 
laise" or "Tipperary." Puzzled and suspi- 
cious eyes were turned towards me, but in 
that utter inability to carry any kind of a 
tune that had been a life-long regret, there 
was safety. The morning of March 17th I 
had a bright idea. Carrying it out, I hunted 
through the rooms of 126 until I found a 
spool of green ribbon of the proper shade. 
138 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

I would carry it to the office, snip it up into 
little pieces so that we might all carry out 
the American tradition of doing honor to 
St. Patrick. Luckily I went by motor, and 
luckily my overcoat was drawn tight over 
the ribbon in my ipwn buttonhole. "No, 
thank you," they said at the office, "we are 
not hankering after the inside of a German 
prison. Don't you know that the green 
ribbon in Belgiimi is the sign of esperance 
(hope) and that the wearing of it is punished 
by the most oppressive measures?" It had 
been so since that day July 21st, 1916, the 
anniversary of Belgian independence, when 
Cardinal Mercier came from Malines to cele- 
brate high mass in Sainte Gudule. The 
wearing of the national colors was strictly 
forbidden. But almost every person in the 
multitude which thronged the Cathedral and 
the adjacent streets had a bit of green rib- 
bon — the symbol of hope — or an ivy leaf — 
139 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

symbol of endurance. Then, too, for the 
first time in many long months, the "Bra- 
banconne" was sung. The song cost the 
city of Brussels a million marks. But, as 
many a Belgian said, it was worth it. 

Since the occupation, there has appeared 
from time to time in Belgium a paper known 
as the Libre Belgique, Rewards were of- 
fered, the most extensive system of espion- 
age was essayed, but the occupying authori- 
ties were never able to discover the place 
where it was printed, or who were its respon- 
sible editors and publishers. Death was the 
penalty for any one convicted of having a 
hand in its making; two years in a German 
prison for being caught in possession of the 
copy. Yet the Libre Belgique continued to 
appear blithely. One day its front page 
showed General von Bissing studying the 
sheet attentively and exclaiming, "Here is 
where I get the real news." Tales were told 
140 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

of Belgians who in hours of assumed friend- 
liness pHed German officers with huge 
draughts of liquid hospitality and then sent 
them reeling home through the streets with 
copies of the forbidden publication pinned 
to their military coat-tails. One day a Bel- 
gian, the head of a great mill, presented me 
with a copy of Libre Belgique, It was his 
last copy. The next morning the authori- 
ties descended upon him and made a thor- 
ough search. For four uneasy days I car- 
ried that paper. Then my nerve gave out. 
At first you were revolted at what appears 
to be the whimpering hypocrisy of the Bel- 
gian press. Then you realized that it is not 
Belgian at all, that every word in La Bel- 
gique in the morning and the Bruxellois in 
the evening was dictated by the German cen- 
sor. Strangest of all were the letters pur- 
porting to come from the deported 
chomeurs. Were it not for the element of 
141 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

pathos they would be uproariously funny. 
"How happy we are among the dear, kind 
Germans," was the refrain. "We never 
knew what real contentment was before. 
We are so sorry for our poor brothers who 
have not yet been deported. We hope, for 
their sake, to see them soon." 

More interesting than the newspapers 
were the affiches issued day by day from the 
presses of the occupying military authorities. 
They contained the Berlin communiques tell- 
ing of the progress of the war on the west- 
ern and eastern fronts and announcing any 
new regulations required for the local gov- 
ernment. These regulations mostly had to 
do with new methods of requisitioning. Be- 
fore Belgium had seemed a land milked dry, 
a land from which most of the cows had been 
driven, and where the only horses were the 
diseased or the aged. I heard of a Belgian 
horse-dealer whose sense of humor proved 
142 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

costly. He possessed a steed that was req- 
uisitioned. It was a fine looking animal. 
So long as it was being urged forward it was 
perfect in stride and action. But when the 
rider tried to make it back, it fell down. 
When he turned over the horse the Belgian 
forgot to mention that peculiarity. Two 
days later, the officer to whom it had been 
given came storming for an explanation. 
"What's the matter with the horse?" asked 
the Belgian suavely. "Of course I know 
that it can't back. But when you start to 
cross the Yser you want a horse to go for- 
ward. You don't want it to back you all 
the way to Brussels, do you?" He paid for 
the pleasantry with three months in prison, 
but I think he considered it worth the price. 
As a result of one of the last requisitioning 
orders we in No. 126 saw the going of the 
copper and the brass. That was in March. 
I am wondering what is left now! 
143 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

The morning of Monday, February 5th, I 
glanced at the first page of JLa Belgique 
after those who happened to gather at the 
breakfast table had seen it. "There is 
nothing new," they said, but after a few 
minutes' study I protested. I said I was 
not so sure. I thought that I had a hunch. 
"Why should the St, Louis be putting back 
into port?" I asked, and pointed to one or 
two other paragraphs that impressed me as 
curious. But the men had lost all respect for 
my hunches. I had had them too often be- 
fore. In the office the long figure of Jack- 
son was standing in the middle of the repre- 
sentatives' room. "Well," he said slowly, 
"we have broken off relations. We heard 
the news through Holland Saturday night." 
Not a line of the break appeared in the Bel- 
gian papers till the evening of February 
6th. Yet the facts were known from one 
end of the land to the other. The waiters 
144 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

were smiling over it in the restaurants and 
cafes, the barber commented upon it whis- 
peringly in your ear as you were lying back 
in his chair. Strange and incomprehensible 
was the effect of that first step and of the 
events that were to come upon the Belgians. 
They forgot what it might mean to the ravit- 
aillement of which they were so vitally in 
need. They saw only the entrance of a new 
ally against the hated oppressor. The hour 
of deliverance from the yoke seemed so much 
nearer at hand. 

When it became apparent that the hours 
of our own usefulness were numbered, there 
was the question of looking about for those 
who were to be our successors. When the 
relations between the United States and the 
Imperial German Government began to be 
critical, Mr. Whitlock naturally ceased to 
be first among the representatives of the still 
neutral countries. His place was taken by 
145 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

the Spanish Minister to Belgium, the Mar- 
quis de Villalobar. Once, many months 
ago, the news reached the C. R. B. office that 
the Germans were about to requisition 
all the machinery. "That," commented 
Sperry, "will be exceedingly hard on Villa- 
lobar." A remarkable man, Villalobar. 
In ancient days he would have been exposed 
as an infant to certain death on a mountain 
top. He was born practically without legs, 
but beyond that opinion differs as to whether 
he is two-thirds or only one-half artificial. 
But the frail body is dominated by a mind of 
singular keenness and clarity. He accom- 
plishes progression by means of a compli- 
cated machinery which he winds up and op- 
erates. The impression is that he is a some- 
what indifferent chauffeur. Rumor has it 
that at times, in shifting from the second to 
the third forward, he misses his gears and 
catches the reverse. 

146 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

A fortnight or three weeks before the de- 
parture from Brussels Villalobar came 
formally to lunch with us in the Commis- 
sion's offices. We saw and acclaimed a 
clever, smiling diplomat, telling of his years 
of service in Washington, expressing senti- 
ments in keeping with the entwining of the 
two flags against the wall, the gridiron with 
the starry field, and the yellow and blood red 
pavilion of Spain; paying compliments to 
the broad humanity of the United States, to 
his highly esteemed colleague the American 
Minister to Belgium, to the Director who 
sat by his side. But there were whispered 
tales that hinted at another Villalobar, 
rumors of moments of privacy when the iron 
will and the stubborn pride that enabled him 
to conceal suffering and physical weakness 
temporarily deserted him; of strange out- 
bursts when the dependents about him 
shrank away from his fiery anger. The 
147 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

stories may have been quite unfounded ; but 
true or false they somehow filled out the pic- 
ture. That very morning returning from 
the mills at Vilvorde I had suggested to 
Louis increased speed, explaining the need 
of being in good time for luncheon as the 
table was to be honored by the presence of 
the Marquis de Villalobar. At the name 
Louis's hands left the steering wheel and 
were tossed eloquently heavenward. "Not 
for one thousand francs a month would I be 
his chauffeur! II frappe ses domestiques!" 
It was a vivid picture that further confi- 
dences from Louis conjured up. The mask 
of unctiousness dropped, the face distorted 
with fury, the voice shrill with screaming 
abuse, the blindly lashing cane. 

It was in response to Villalobar's call to 

his countrymen that, late in March, there 

appeared on the scene five or six young and 

much bewhiskered Spaniards. There was 

148 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

one little personal incident to their coming 
that can never be forgotten. They had 
lunched at noon at our offices when only a 
handful of the Americans was present. 
Then, in the afternoon, they were directed 
to take quarters in certain indicated houses. 
Two of them made their way to No. 126 
Avenue Louise, found beds unoccupied, and 
retired for the night. It happened that sev- 
eral of the Americans living in the house 
were being entertained at dinner in Belgian 
homes and returned after drinking many 
toasts in the small hours of the morning. 
In the unceremonious manner usual in the 
establishment, one of them began prowling 
around the various rooms. He was soon 
heard coming down stairs two steps at a 
time. His eyes were startled and his voice 
husky. "It was in the bed, right against 
the pillow, that I saw it!" "What did you 
see?" "I don't know just what it was, but 
149 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

it looked like large bunches of Castilian 
spinach!" In this way was announced the 
coming of the Dons. 

Allusion has already been made to the 
necessity for discretion in deportment and 
above all in discussion, that was constantly 
being enjoined on us. Even before Febru- 
ary 3rd English was not exactly a popular 
language. Not with people belonging to 
the occupying nation. Everywhere, in 
hotel, restaurant, cafe and theater, were to 
be seen the gray coats of the officers. Even 
more to be distrusted was that invisible army 
which had paved the way for the invasion in 
the years before and which still remained an 
indispensable, perhaps the most indispensa- 
ble, part of the whole army of occupation. 
The German officers themselves were sub- 
jected to constant espionage. Between 
courses of an officers' dinner at Lille, to which 
150 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

he had to be taken in order that his officer 
might be present, Leach went to the coat- 
room. There he fomid the only other civil- 
ian invited, a member of the German Secret 
Service, going through the pockets of the 
overcoats. With us, the man at the next 
table, apparently so much absorbed in the 
Messager de Bruxelles, might be listening to 
every word of the talk with ears trained for 
the work by five years in a business-house in 
Sheffield. The demure little middle-aged 
woman over the way might have a number in 
the Wilhelmstrasse. Yet at times the need 
of a means of communication in the open 
was imperative. There existed happily a 
domain of language which was a trackless 
country, a No Man's Land, for any one not 
trained to its bye-paths, its pitfalls, its quag- 
mires. English would not do. French 
would not do. There remained, for the 
151 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

baffling of inquisitive ears, the vast, rich 
range of American slang. On that ground 
we felt we were safe. 

To illustrate. I had just heard that a 
German in the United States had made an 
attempt upon the life of the President. It 
was at a time when every event of the kind 
was making our participation in the war 
more certain. How the news leaked in I do 
not know. I shall never know. That was 
the peculiarity of news in Belgium. You 
heard the rumor but you could trace it to no 
apparent source. In the barber's shop were 
several German officers. Entered Sperry 
of California, who had just returned from 
a trip to the provinces, and would be likely 
to know nothing of the report. It would 
be better if he were informed before report- 
ing at the Pass Zentrale. He took the next 
chair. The information was coded and the 
dialogue ran somewhat as follows : 
152 



INSIDE THE BOTTLE 

"Nix on any of these spangled Delicates- 
sens getting wise, but if there were any 
wuUy extrees in this burg, they'd be scare 
heading about a Heinie who has just tried 
to put over a Czolgos on the Main Squeeze." 

A pause and then back from the lathered 
lips in the other chair : 

"I getcha, Steve. What's the next call 
for dinner in the dining car?" 

"You can search me. But I think it is 
all to the merry." 

"Say, when will those guys stop trying to 
steal second with the bases full?" 

"What do you expect from Bush League 
beans? The skids for them! But tell me. 
Am I taking too long a lead off first?" 

" Ataboy ! These gazabos will never tum- 
ble to the line in a thousand years." 

Thus was the purity of the language pre- 
served by the C. R. B. 
153 



PART III 
GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 



A PARIS MEMORY 

IT was a sunshiny afternoon ten or eleven 
days after the arrival in Paris. Percy 
of Mississippi and the writer, meeting by 
chance in front of the Madeleine, decided 
that a porto blanc would be neither unwise 
nor unpleasant, and found a table in front 
of the first, cafe on the right side of the Rue 
Royale as you go down towards the Place 
de la Concorde. Incidentally, it is a cafe 
associated with a great scene in fiction. 
There, in Alphonse Daudet's "Sappho," 
Jean Gaussin fell in with Caoudal, the sculp- 
tor, and Dechelette, the engineer, and for 
the first time learned the story of Fanny 
Legrand's tempestuous past. References 
157 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

were made to the book and the scene, and 
then I pointed to the groups of Sengalese 
soldiers passing along the sidewalk, asked 
Percy if the sight of the glistening black 
faces did not make him homesick for Green- 
ville, and assuming a Southern drawl, dis- 
coursed learnedly of certain dishes dear to 
the Southern palate. But my flippancy did 
not bring the expected response. About 
Percy's eyes there was still a trace of the 
odd, strained look. Ten days previously I 
had reached the conclusion that I was one 
sane man traveling with six unbalanced com- 
panions ; that is until they informed me that 
they had seriously considered having the 
train stopped at Charenton and seeing that 
I was safely put away for a time in the 
maison de sante there. Now for a time, 
Percy maintained a persistent silence. Fi- 
nally he spoke. "Tell me," he said, "was it 
all a dream?" I understood. I recalled 
158 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

the last weeks in Brussels, the turbulent days 
of doubts and expectations; I recalled our 
departure from the Gare du Nord, the weep- 
ing Belgians and the last call of the gath- 
ered men of the C. R. B. as the train was 
pulling out, "Good-by, boys! Good luck! 
If you get through all right let us know, for 
we will be soon following you"; I recalled 
the strange night ride to the frontier, the 
six-handed poker game under the dim light, 
the seventh man sitting with face against 
the window pane, whispering reassuringly, 
"It's all right, I recognize the down grade 
into Liege. We seem to be bound for 
Cologne as they promised us"; I recalled the 
hours in Cologne, and the trip up the left 
bank of the Rhine, and the glaring eyes of 
bitter dislike, and the changes at Mayence 
and Offenberg, and the night spent in Zin- 
gen in the Black Forest, and the acid bath 
for which we were prepared but which we 
159 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

escaped, and the first welcoming voice that 
told us that we were on Swiss soil. It was 
the voice of the Swiss soldier to whom I 
handed my passport. "Goot ole Oonited 
States," he said with a grin as he examined 
the document. And it sounded like music. 
In looking back I knew what Percy had 
meant when he asked "Was it all a 
dream?" 



160 



II 



LAST DAYS IN BRUSSELS^ — THE CHANGING 
CITY 

** y^^UR business is to keep up the ravi- 
\^ taillement of these poor people as 
long as we can," the Brussels Director, 
Warren Gregory of San Francisco, had 
said at the first general meeting of the dele- 
gates after the breaking of diplomatic rela- 
tions in February. "That is our duty. 
But we have another duty. That is, if war 
between Germany and the United States 
becomes inevitable, to get out of Belgium as 
quickly as possible. To stay under such 
conditions would be to hamper seriously the 
Government at Washington. When it 
comes to that point we must go at once. 
That is," he added significantly, "if they 
161 



BOTTLED TIP IN BELGIUM 

will let us." When, about the first of 
March, we heard of the Zunmerman note, 
there could no longer be any doubt. That 
bit of news differed from other news because 
there was no attempt on the part of the 
German papers that came into Belgium, or 
the German controlled Belgian press, to ob- 
scure or delay it. They were too eager to 
tell what they thought of the prying Yankee 
trick that had found the heart of the intrigue. 
*'Base treachery against the Imperial Gov- 
ernment on United States soil" is a literal 
translation. There was a certain humor in 
the situation. The fact that the plot had 
promised California to Japan, and Texas to 
Mexico, gave the opportunity for protest 
against the presence at the morning table of 
Leach and Kittridge of San Francisco, and 
Maverick of San Antonio. It was not 
pleasant to be sitting down to breakfast with 
two Japs and a Greaser. But they retorted 
162f 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

that New Jersey — ^my native State — was to 
be a German province, and called me 
"Boche" or "Fritzie." 

The last weeks in Brussels were weeks of 
waiting, during which the dominant emo- 
tion was one of curiosity as to what was 
about to happen next. One evening in the 
hour between the return from the Dock Of- 
fice and the sortie for dinner, there was a 
ring at the door bell, and Louis appeared, 
twirhng his mustache, and proffering a 
note. It was from Sperry and read: 
"They will be coming to go through the 
house for brass and copper. For the Love 
of Mike make sure that every man's room 
is safe. Destroy all French and English 
newspapers. Particularly see that those 
copies of Punch 'with the pictures of him 
(him of course meant the Kaiser) are all 
before the war numbers. Go through every 
man's correspondence. It's no time to be 
163 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

squeamish. I would do it myself only I am 
not coming to the house!" 

In those weeks the aspect of the city 
seemed to change. It had been the coldest 
winter in the history of the land, and a 
winter practically without coal. In No. 126 
Avenue Louise we had acquired the habit of 
shivering ourselves to sleep at a tempera- 
ture of twelve to fourteen below zero, centi- 
grade. A thieving Belgian urchin would 
steal from a cart a piece of charcoal half 
the size of a brick and make a scampering, 
triumphant escape. The school houses were 
closed. All shops were ordered to shut their 
doors at five o'clock in the afternoon. Now, 
however, came occasional bright days that 
brought the promise of spring. Military 
activity became more in evidence. In Janu- 
ary I had estimated the number of German 
soldiers in Brussels at thirty thousand. In 
March it was probably more than a hundred 
164 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

thousand. The new arrivals congested the 
Grand Place, studying, guidebook in hand, 
the gilded fa9ades of the Hotel de Ville and 
the Guildhalls, and streamed down the Rue 
de I'Etuve to snigger before the Manneken. 
Rumor had the Kaiser at Liege, the Crown 
Prince at Namur, Hindenberg at Verviers. 
Cavalrymen tried out horses in the Avenue 
Louise. There were more sentries in the 
forbidden Rue de la Loi, before the Palais 
de la Nation, which was the headquarters of 
the military staif , and where, as a precaution 
against raids of the French and British air- 
men, the Belgian political prisoners were 
incarcerated just under the roof. Van Hee 
of the Consulate at Ghent appeared every 
third day in the C. R. B. Representatives' 
Room, with his invariable story of the Ger- 
man plan for the immediate invasion of Hol- 
land. We can forgive that story, for Van 
Hee was one of the men in the service who 
165 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

upheld the American tradition. There were 
other so-called American Consuls of which 
the same could not be said. One in particu- 
lar, so I was told, was in the habit of ex- 
plaining the violation of Belgian neutrality 
by the excuse *'Our soldiers simply had to 
go through." Now, for the first time ap- 
peared in the papers disquieting references 
to the impending German retreat. There 
is no doubt of the fact that we were im- 
pressed. In cold blood we did not in the 
least credit the inspired news of the Belgian 
press. But the constant hammering, the in- 
sistence, day after day, upon Central suc- 
cesses and Entente reverses had had its ef- 
fect. What must have been the impression 
made on the Belgians, after two and a half 
years under the strain? Men in the cafes 
claimed to know of the existence of vast 
subterranean chambers, in the construction 
of which tens of thousands of men had been 
166 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

engaged for months. For long months 
they had prayed for this Allied advance. 
Now that it was coming they feared for it. 
If you pointed out that Haig and Nivelle 
were likely to be thoroughly informed, they 
shook their heads. "It is a great trap. 
And even if they should come to Brussels 
there would be no Brussels. Ours is an 
undermined city." They felt the same 
about the idea of the entrance of the United 
States into the war. It revived hope and 
yet brought apprehension. The Americans 
of the C. R. B. could no longer remain, and 
that would mean letting go of the hand that 
had so long linked them to the world be- 
yond. I think the pressure of that reassur- 
ing hand meant almost as much to Belgium 
as the material sustenance. Once, in a 
moment of depression, I confided to Maver- 
ick my feelings of general inadequacy. 
"The Belgian secretary at the Dock Office 
16T 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

seems to do about four-fifths the work." 
"That's what he is there for," replied Maver- 
ick cheerfully; "you're here to sign the pa- 
pers you don't understand, and to give these 
guys the glad hand." 

By the end of the second week of March 
it was no longer a question of whether we 
were going, but whether the occupying mili- 
tary authorities would let us go. With a 
foresight based on experience the Director 
had held the North of France men from 
their posts since the first week in February. 
This time there could be no reasonable ex- 
cuse for detention on the ground of recent 
observation of the movements of military 
bodies near the front. Nevertheless the first 
conditions called for a stay at Baden-Baden 
for a period of fifteen or thirty days. The 
German passports given us so read, and not 
till we had crossed the Swiss frontier at 
Schaffhausen were we quite sure that Baden 
168 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

was not our destination. It was arranged 
that the departure should be made in two 
groups. First seven men would go through, 
and then the rest would follow two or three 
days later. The men selected to leave first 
were the North of France men, Charles 
Leach, Alfred C. B. Fletcher, and Tracy 
Kittridge of California, Robert Maverick of 
Texas, and Philip K. Potter of New York; 
and also William A. Percy of Mississippi, 
who had been stationed at Antwerp, and 
myself. The second group was to consist of 
all the other members of the C. R. B. with 
the exception of three men left to wind up 
the affairs of the office, and to be accom- 
panied by Mr. Brand Whitlock and the 
other members of the American Legation. 
Incidentally I had lunch at the Legation 
with Mr. and Mrs. Whitlock the Friday be- 
fore we left and Mrs. Whitlock told me 
that she had been packed up for departure 
169 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

since the day after the sinking of the Lusi- 
tania. 

The Minister and Mrs. Whitlock were 
then living in the American Legation at 74 
Rue de Treves, a gloomy building in a 
gloomy street. American housewives at 
home complain of the servant problem. 
But think of the complications of Mrs. 
Whitlock's position, of what she had to 
guard against. For the German secret 
service agent who could in the guise of a 
domestic, wriggle his or her way into the 
minister's household, there were in Berlin 
Iron Crosses and material reward. Two 
years ago I had heard a story about Mrs. 
Whitlock. It was to the effect that one 
evening in the early days of the occupation, 
Mr. and Mrs. Whitlock and the man who 
had told the tale were sitting in the Legation 
library. The servants had gone for the 
night. Suddenly Mrs. Whitlock looked up 
170 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

and asked her husband "Through it all I 
have been pretty good, have I not ?" He as- 
sured her that she had been all that and more. 
"Then I want to ask something," she con- 
tinued. "Certainly, what is it?" "When 
they go away again can I take just one shot 
at them?" I recalled that story. But in 
the laughter of the Minister and of Mrs. 
Whitlock there was neither affirmation nor 
denial. 

That the Minister described the coming 
of the German armies to Brussels in the 
words, "As, chanting, the column climbed 
the slope of the Chaussee de Louvain it 
seemed to be swinging out of the Feudal 
Ages" has already been told. The soldiers 
were moving from east to west. The prob- 
able line of march would be past the Botan- 
ical Gardens, the Palace Hotel, and the 
Gare du Nord, and then across the Senne 
Canal, in the direction of the Channel Coast. 
171 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

Or, reaching the Boulevards, the column 
would turn to the left, along the Boulevard 
de Waterloo to the Porte Louise, down the 
Avenue Louise to the Bois de la Cambre, 
and onward, past the Battlefield of Water- 
loo, towards the French frontier. Seeing 
the head of the column approaching, the 
Minister lost no time in returning to the 
Legation, where, in addition to Mrs. Whit- 
lock, were his own mother and Mrs. Whit- 
lock's mother. They must make haste, 
he urged. The Germans were passing 
through, and would probably slip away un- 
seen if there were any unnecessary delay. 
He laughed at the recollection. "It never 
dawned upon me what a modern army would 
be like. I was thinking in terms of militia 
parades of the Middle West. Gone ! Why 
for three days and three nights the seem- 
ingly endless host roared and rumbled 
through." 

1T2 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

For ten days or two weeks we were almost 
hourly waiting the orders to go. Several 
of these days were spent in mumbling over 
and over such phrases as ''M. S. H. G. 
'Armee Beige 52'' ''Pas de vos nouvelles 
depuis six mois. Eccil dur, Vacances obli- 
gatoire. Pdques a Anvers, Adrien tou" 
jours parmi nous/' A memory kept in con- 
stant training by conceit and an ambition to 
be able to recall at a moment's notice cer- 
tain trivialities of life, was at last to serve a 
useful and honorable purpose. Thanks to 
it there were later written and mailed in 
Paris ten or eleven letters from Belgians to 
their friends and relatives safe behind the 
British and French lines. 



173 



Ill 



DEPARTURE — THE RHINE — THE BLACK 
FOREST 

THE day came, the 29th of March. At 
noon we were told that we were to 
leave that night from the Gare du Nord, 
10;20 Beige, 11:20 Boche. We were to 
meet for the last Brussels dinner in the 
Palace Hotel. We recalled the Palace a 
few evenings before, when at the entrance 
of five or six of us, the Belgian orchestra 
took a long chance, and whispering "ravitail- 
lement/' played "The Stars and Stripes For- 
ever" under the noses of two or three hun- 
dred German officers. The Germans sus- 
pected the tune, but they were not quite sure, 
so grinningly the orchestra struck it up 
174 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

again and again. On the way to the dinner, 
there were stops to be made, good-bys to be 
said, hands to be shaken, toasts to be drunk. 
Perhaps the memory of those last hours is 
not unnaturally somewhat hazy. I recall 
that when the word was passed that but 
eight minutes remained before the leaving 
hour, I had forgotten in which coat room I 
had left hat, ulster, and suit case, — they were 
found by Curtis of Boston (Thanks, Curtis! 
I did not have time to say it then, or to tell 
you how like you the kindly action was) 
and by him flung through the window of the 
moving train — I remember the walk, hatless 
and coatless, across the icy square, and the 
long platform lined by the C. R. B. and 
>vhat seemed to be all weeping Belgium, and 
then the whistle, and the swinging hats, and 
the farewell cheer. "Good-by, boys! Good 
luck!" 

There have been many games of poker 
175 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

played, but there has never been one just 
like the one played through that night, 
broken by the stop and frontier examination 
at Herbesthal. Calls were made in whis- 
pers. If you raised a mark it made no dif- 
ference whether the stake tossed upon 
the suit ease was a zinc Belgian twenty-five 
centime piece or a handful of paper. Every- 
thing went, cards or money, at the value it 
was called. From time to time curious, re- 
sentful German eyes peered in at us from 
the corridor windows. The mad Americans 
puzzled them. Kultur contemplated the 
barbarians. Then came the morning, and 
in the dawn the spires of Cologne Cathedral. 
We had taken with us our own provisions, 
loaves of bread and packages of military 
biscuit, hard-boiled eggs and chocolate. At 
Cologne we were to stay from six o'clock 
till half past nine, and, carrying our food 
packages, we made our way from the station 
176 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

to a near-by hotel, through streets that were 
surprisingly deserted. With us was our 
custodian Oberlieutenant L., who had 
thoughtfully sought the seclusion of another 
compartment during the journey of the 
previous night. Here I want to express ap- 
preciation of L.'s consideration throughout 
that trip. Our passports read for home, via 
Germany, Switzerland, France, and Spain. 
I think he suspected that we were really 
bound for Paris. But he said nothing. I 
don't think he blamed us. So here is good 
luck to you, Oberlieutenant, and bad luck 
to your regiment! 

After breakfasting at the hotel from our 
own supplies, there was a brief visit to the 
almost empty Cathedral, a short walk 
through the near-bystreets, and then we en- 
tered the train for Mayence. Soon we were 
winding along the Rhine. "So you saw the 
Seven Mountains, and Drachenfels, and the 
177 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

Castle of Rolandseck/' said, soon after my 
arrival home, an enthusiastic Rhenish trav- 
eler of other years. "I did," I replied; "I 
am now standing on the right bank of the 
Rahway River. Eight weeks ago to-day I 
was on the left bank of the Rhine. Some- 
how the Rahway looks better to me than the 
Rhine did." Two days after the arrival in 
New York Percy of Mississippi, en route 
for his native Greenville, met me by appoint- 
ment at the Princeton Club. There we 
chanced upon Dyer, who had lived in the 
same house with Percy in Brussels, and we 
crossed the square to take lunch at the Play- 
ers Club. Picking up the bill of fare Percy 
began to laugh as he read out "Shad roe and 
bacon." "Don't you remember going up 
the Rhine your persistent attempts to tell 
of the first meal you were going to have at 
home? You always began with shad roe 
and bacon. We never let you get beyond 
178 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

that. But five minutes later you would 
start again with shad roe and bacon and 
have to be squelched again." 

In times of peace the journey from Brus- 
sels to Paris was one of four and a half 
hours. Our roundabout way consumed six 
nights and five days. The only meal on the 
trip through Germany at which we drew 
upon the resources of the country was on 
the train from Cologne to Mayence. The 
meal — the train was one of the crack trains 
of Germany — consisted of a small coffee cup 
of pea soup, a fragment of stock fish, and 
two inches of perfectly dry omelette. We 
were guilty of an indiscretion. We pro- 
duced a large loaf of bread. But it served 
as a diversion. The people in the dining 
car for the moment stopped glaring hatred 
at the "Amerikaners" to look with covetous 
eyes at their bread. By the time we had 
been shifted at Mayence for a way train to 
179 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

Offenberg, there to change again for Zingen, 
that state of irritation which had led to the 
suppression of my well meant efforts to 
provide entertainment by the construction 
of a United States menu, had become gen- 
eral. We were in the full swing of the 
Hymn of Hate. Everybody snarled at 
everybody else. Potter accused Leach of 
being a grouch, and told him what he thought 
of him. When, at midnight, we arrived at 
Zingen, I tried to swing a suit case through 
the window, I smashed Maverick's hat. 
When he protested I turned on him sav- 
agely and told him I would do it again if 
it so pleased me. When I apologized some 
time later he grinned. He had understood. 
But somehow I think the apology was un- 
necessary. The next morning I entered a 
barber shop, Maverick came in to make 
strange motions behind me and to exhort the 
barber in what sounded like execrable Ger- 
180 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

man. I think he was telling him that I 
was one of the hated "Amerikaners" and 
pointing out the barber's obvious duty as a 
patriotic German while he had me at his 
mercy in the chair. We slept some that 
night in Zingen, thanks to the midnight 
supper of our bread and eggs, washed down 
by glasses of the rather sour wine of the 
country. When I awoke and threw wide the 
shutters, it was to look out on gabled win- 
dows, slanting roofs, against a background 
of dark trees. In my teens I had gone down 
the Rhine, stopping at Mayence, Coblenz, 
and Cologne. Now I was in a comer of 
the world new to me. The Black Forest! 
From earliest years there had been magic 
and mystery in the name. But depression 
came with the sight of the sullen faces, the 
eyes either averted, or bright with frank dis- 
like. Could this be the Black Forest of 
legend, of folklore; where eighteenth cen- 
181 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

tury innkeepers prepared descending beds 
for unwary travelers; the Black Forest of 
peasant weddings, and rustic dances, and 
chiming bells, and watchmen calling the 
night? 



182 



IV 



FRANCE — THE STARRY BANNER — YARNS OF 
PARIS 

OH, the joy of coming out of a land 
of bitterness and poison, where offi- 
cers in train corridors drew away from phys- 
ical contact with the spitting sneer "Ameri- 
kaner," to find oneself in a country where 
every face was smiling welcome ! We were 
journeying northward again in the train 
from Bellegarde to Paris. From Zingen 
we had made our way to the Swiss-German 
frontier at Schaffhausen; thence to Zurich, 
and on to Berne, where a two days' stay 
was necessary in order to obtain the required 
vise of the American Legation and the cre- 
dential letter from the French Embassy. 
The latter read, translated, "The Ambas- 
183 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

sador of the French Republic in Switzerland 
has the honor to recommend to the good 
offices of the French civil and military au- 
thorities M. i member of the 

American Commission for Relief in Bel- 
gium and the North of France, returning 
to the United States by France and Spain 
(via Paris)." 

In Brussels I was in the habit of saying 
to the other men in the house that they were 
welcome to help themselves to anything of 
mine, except my toothbrush and my Ameri- 
can passport. On French soil, with the 
Ambassador's introduction in my pocket, all 
other documents were tossed to the bottom 
of the trunk. Not that it opened all gates. 
But it made obtaining the countless '^Sauf 
conduits'' and "Permis de sejour*' necessary 
a mere matter of form. Incidentally the 
only trouble I experienced in traveling in 
France had to do with my birthplace. In 
184 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

response to the question, ''Ou etes vous 
nee?" I would reply glibly and without any 
attempt at Gallicising, ''Rahway, New Jer- 
sey." Incomprehensible as it appears, the 
oiBcials seemed never to have heard of Rah- 
way. New Jersey, and, after puzzled stares, 
would write down "Rio Janeiro." 

From Berne we traveled to Lausanne, 
and along Lake Leman to Geneva, where 
there was a wait of two hours, after which 
we took the train for Paris. In Brussels 
the task of days talking nothing but un- 
grammatical Firench became often irksome, 
and the luncheon hour at the office and the 
evenings at 126 Avenue Louise where con- 
versation without mental seeking for the 
right word was possible came as a positive 
relief. But after the days in Germany and 
German Switzerland the sound of French- 
speaking voices was like papers from the old 
home town. 

185 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

It was five o'clock in the morning of 
Wednesday, April 4th, that the delayed 
train stopped at the little station of Laroche, 
about half way between Dijon and Paris. 
On the platform were rolls and chocolate, 
and smiling French officers, clad in light 
blue or khaki, and wearing the calotte , the 
boat-shaped fatigue cap, were pacing to and 
fro. "C'est la guerre f' I heard one of them 
say, and in the newspaper in his hands I 
saw the black headlines announcing the en- 
trance of the United States into the world 
>var. "Don't teU me I'm a belligerent," 
grumbled Fletcher as I went back to spread 
the news, "I already know it." If we had 
doubted it then, the aspect of Paris would 
have told the story. Everywhere the Stars 
and Stripes were flying. The city had been 
ransacked for the flag, and from the Gov- 
ernment orders went out that it should fly 
over every school house and public building 
186 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

in France. Yet in one way France was a 
disappointment. I had been so long bottled 
up, so long suppressed, that I wanted to 
hear noise, and to help make it. At least 
I expected to hear an occasional ^'Vive la 
Francer I never did. I saw the senti- 
ment shining in the eyes of children. But 
it was a changed France that I found; a 
strangely quiet France; a nation smiling, 
but still wracked by anguish. 

At three o'clock that afternoon I went to 
sleep. I was unjustly awakened at eleven 
o'clock the next morning by the ringing of 
the telephone bell. "This is Phil Potter 
speaking," the voice said. "Be at the Ho- 
tel France et Choiseul before two. We are 
invited to the French Senate to hear Prime 
Minister Ribot formally announce the en- 
trance of the United States into the war." 
It will be many years before any of us ever 
forget that scene, or the simple, impressive 
187 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

words of the aged Premier. "We all feel 
that something far surpassing a political 
event has just taken place. The most pa- 
cific democracy on earth has announced that 
she can no longer remain neutral when the 
issue is so clearly one between civilization 
and barbarism, liberty and despotism. The 
great American republic, in entering the war 
on our side and the side of our Allies, asks 
neither conquest nor compensation. Sim- 
ply she must take up the gage of battle so 
ruthlessly thrown down." Then the stand- 
ing Senate turning to the box of the Amer- 
ican Ambassador, the long handclapping, 
the ''Vive les jStats UnisT and the unfurling 
of our flag. 

Succeeding days brought similar invita- 
tions and ceremonies. There was the Prise 
d'Armes at the Invalides, the decoration 
with the Croix de Guerre or the Medaille 
Militaire at the Grand Palais of the terribly 
188 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

wounded and the widows and orphans of 
those who had given their hves for the 
awarded honors, the Congress of the Repre- 
sentatives of the Allied Nations at 136 Ave- 
nue des Champs ifilysees, and one scene, at 
an exhibition of cinema war pictures made 
for the French government, that illustrated 
the sentiment of the C. R. B. The later 
departures from Belgium had just reached 
Paris, and in the darkness I could recognize 
faces I had not seen since the last night in 
Brussels. At a point in one of the scenes 
shown, from the facing trenches sprang up 
hundreds of green-gray clad men. Their 
arms had been thrown away. With hands 
high above their heads, some of them waving 
pictures of frau and hinder, they rushed to- 
wards the French guns. You could almost 
hear the "Kameradenl Kameradenr of 
surrender. A cackle, rising into a yell, went 
up from the throats of the C. R. B. men. 
189 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

"It's the real thing. I guess we know those 
uniforms. We've seen enough of them" 

"Why ask me?" I have retorted to per- 
sons at home who have demanded informa- 
tion ahout the war. "You have been far 
enough away to have reasonably authentic 
news. Closer to the fighting we had little 
but rumor." In Brussels we could hear that 
Lille had been razed to the ground and that 
St. Quentin was in flames. Of extraordi- 
nary variety were the yarns of Paris. I 
don't know how many of them have crossed 
the Atlantic. I tell them as I heard them, 
asking pardon if the tale be old. 

First there was the story of the Kaiser's 
Paris dinner. It was the day before the 
tide turned in the Battle of the Marne, when 
the armies of Von Kluck were fifteen miles 
from Paris, that agents of the French secret 
service paid an unexpected visit to the Hotel 
Astoria in the Champs filysees. Under the 
190 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

roof they found a wireless that was being 
operated by the German maitre d'hotel. 
They also found full plans for the dinner 
that had been ordered for the Emperor 
William for the following night. Arrange- 
ments had been made with characteristic 
Teutonic regard for detail. His Majesty 
was to sit at a table in a corner of the dining 
room overlooking the Arch of Triumph. 
The menu, of which I was shown an alleged 
copy, is too long to give here. It is enough 
to tell that it began with caviar, then oysters 
of Ostend, then a thick soup, and then a 
filet of sole. The wines were of choice vin- 
tages from the Astoria's cellars. Just what 
foundation there was for the story it is hard 
to say. But it is known the bodies of some 
of the Prussian Guard found on the field 
after the retreat were in the white imif orms 
to be worn for the Kaiser's entry into the 
city. 

191 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

There was the "inside" story of the Battle 
of the Marne, which, but for the treachery 
of five French generals, two of whom were 
shot, and the three others condemned to life 
imprisonment, was to have ended in the utter 
annihilation of the invading hosts. For 
years the French General Staff had had the 
battleground in mind, for years French of- 
ficers had been sent out to study every pool, 
tree, and rock of the vast terrain. Never 
once through the long retreat was the line 
for the stand forgotten. It was to be the 
grave of Prussian military ambition. But 
the five Grouchys who were to have brought 
up the reserves held to deliver the coup de 
grace failed and the shattered armies of Von 
Kluck escaped to dig themselves in along 
the Aisne. 

Even more extraordinary was the tale of 
General Gallieni's end. "You think it was 
peritonitis that killed him. That was what 
192 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

the papers were told to print. Mon ami, 
he was shot at midnight while presiding at 
the council table in the fortress of Verdun 
by a General in the German pay. In a 
battle-scarred field just outside the city is 
a grave on which are carved the words, 
*Herr, Traitor to France.'" Then the 
strange yarn was told, with many assurances 
of its absolute truth. The General, an Al- 
satian with a German wife, had been in high 
command when the Crown Prince launched 
the terrific drive against Verdun. Deaf to 
the appeals of his officers, he ordered the 
evacuation of the forts of Vaux and Douau- 
mont. Secret investigation discovered over- 
whelming proof of his intrigues with the en- 
emy. He was summoned to the council 
room in the citadel. At the head of the table 
were seated Gallieni, Nivelle, and Petain. 
His opinion as to the course to be followed 
asked, the doomed General advised retreat 
193 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

along the whole line. Then Gallieni stood 
up to read the indictment and to throw upon 
the table the damning evidence. In conclu- 
sion he drew his revolver from his belt and 
handed it to the guilty officer, telling him to 
go into the next room and blow out his brains. 
Instead the convicted man seized his own 
pistol and shot Gallieni through the stomach. 
The traitor was shot at dawn. 



194 



HOMEWARD BOUND 

AN old friend— O. J. — , to whom I had 
said good-by last in July, 1916, on the 
French Line pier in New York was finish- 
ing his novel in Cannes, and thither I made 
my way to find repose and Mediterranean 
sunshine, and the environment of such a 
peace that I had forgotten existed in the 
world. Vividly I recall the waking of the 
first morning. The sun was shining. The 
voices of playing children came up from the 
garden, below. The force of the Mistral 
that had been blowing for days had died 
down, though it still swayed the branches of 
the palms and olives, and lashed the Mediter- 
ranean into foam. The windows framed 
195 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

the panorama that sweeps from the lies des 
Lerins to the Esterel. From the near-by 
room came the sound of a Victrola. It was 
the first heard in four months. It had been 
playing Harry Lauder's "The British Bull- 
dog's Watching at the Door." But Oh! I 
wanted to hear "Dixie" and "Marching 
Through Georgia" and "My Old Kentucky 
Home" and for sheer swing, "There'll be a 
Hot Time in the Old Town To-night." 

Yet strangely, in the midst of that sooth- 
ing tranquillity, hundreds of miles away from 
the nearest battle front, I saw the great 
struggle with a surer vision and a broader 
comprehension than ever before or since. 
The French advance of April 17 was at first 
heralded as a great success. American 
cablegrams to the French papers pictured 
the enthusiasm with which the news had been 
received by the audience in the Metropolitan 
Opera House in New York — the smiling di- 
196 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

rector appearing before the rung down 
curtain, and with uplifted hand saying: 
"Notre splendide allie, notre chere soeur 
la France, vient de remporter une grande 
victoire. Dioc mille prisonniers, C'est le 
commencement de la fin!" But in Cannes 
we knew better. Invalided officers of high 
rank, who knew every hectare of the bloody 
ground, shook their heads. Progress and 
prisoners, yes; but you will learn that the 
price paid was a terrible one. Be it under- 
stood that it was not as a casual visitor, even 
as a citizen of the great and powerful nation 
that had just become France's ally, that I 
was entrusted with such confidences; but as 
a member of the Do-As-You-Please Club 
which dined around an American flag flying 
from the neck of an empty wine bottle on a 
table in the Hotel Suisse. It was my com- 
pany that guaranteed me. It is to Cannes, 
its smiling face and its plenty that my 
197 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

thoughts turn back when I hear, as we all 
hear from time to time of the terrible plight 
of France, bled white, and menaced by 
starvation. I recall a Sunday drive back 
in the mountains to Auribeau, an old, old 
town of winding streets climbing to the an- 
cient church that crowns the hilltop. Close 
by the church is the school house with its 
garden. "Do you see that?" said O. J., 
pointing to the garden. "That is the an- 
swer. That is why they are licking the 
Germans." 

Two weeks later, homeward bound, we 
were making our way across Southern 
France. From the windows of the train, 
which took eight hours for the journey from 
Cannes to Marseilles, we saw the vast camps, 
exact reproductions of fighting fields of the 
North, where French officers were training 
the Sengalese in the grim business of war; 
and, from time to time, the air black with 
198 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

the maneuvering bird-men. Then Taras- 
eon, land of Tartarin and the gale jade, 
Cette, Carcassonne, — "He never gazed on 
Carcassonne: each mortal has his Carcas- 
sonne/' — Toulouse, and Bordeaux, with its 
Barbary Coast, and its strange driftage of 
the Seven Seas. There I was to hear the 
latest news of the C. R. B. men and to read 
Percy's Greenville cablegram of congratu- 
lation, rich with the flowery eloquence of the 
old South. 

Recalling the length of that cablegram I 
feel sure that Greenville must have assumed 
an issue of long term bonds to pay for its 
transmission. With wicked envy I taunted 
Percy with its superlatives. With true 
politeness of the heart he attempted to 
soothe me with the suggestion that a similar 
one for me was probably somewhere on the 
way. But I knew better. My native town 
had already done its bit for me. "It was 
199 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

the night before I sailed," I explained mood- 
ily. "They arrested me and they took me 
to the jail. Oh, yes. It was the 5th of 
January, and I was running the car on the 
old 1916 license plates." 

There was to Bordeaux an American 
flavor that it had never known in the years 
before. American cattlemen lurched about 
the streets. As you were walking along the 
water front accents at once nasal and 
fuddled stumbled through a hard luck story 
and sought to wheedle a loan. A small 
group of gunners that had come over on 
United States ships rioted in an affluence 
that was amazing but short lived. The men 
were in possession of an apparently inex- 
haustible supply of highly colored certifi- 
cates designed to advertise a new brand of 
chewing tobacco. These they proceeded to 
spend royally. "This," one of them would 
200 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

say, peeling off a certificate, "is good for two 
thousand crowbars. Keep the change." 
The situation did not seem so comical when 
they surveyed it from behind the bars of 
French cells. Their nationality saved them 
serious trouble. After being held a few 
hours to think matters over, they were re- 
leased with the warning to behave them- 
selves in future. Two or three days before 
the Chicago sailed, the morning train from 
Paris brought eight or ten American ambu- 
lance drivers homeward bound. They soon 
exhausted the diversions that the city af- 
forded. Then they learned that there were 
many thousand German prisoners of war in 
the neighborhood of Bordeaux. "Let us go 
call on the Boches," some one suggested. 
So they went, and derived huge satisfaction 
from gazing, and thrusting out their tongues, 
and dangling fake sausages attached to 
201 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

sticks. It was the only case of ill-treatment 
of German prisoners in France of which I 
heard. 

In a previous chapter reference has been 
made to our use of American slang in Brus- 
sels as a medium by which we could frus- 
trate German listeners. That sanctuary of 
language, into which so few foreigners are 
ever able to penetrate, belongs to every na- 
tion. John Poe, who died greatly in Flan- 
ders with the Black Watch, and who, I am 
sure, met death with the same kind smile on 
his face that he wore the first day I met 
him, a quarter of a century ago, in the old 
Osborn Club house at Princeton, when I was 
a freshman trying for the class team, often 
wrote to his brothers telling of sitting among 
his fellows of the regiment, linguistically al- 
most a stranger. In France the argot of be- 
fore the war was baffling enough. There has 
sprung up a new argot, born of the great 
202 



GETTING OUT OP THE BOTTLE 

conflict, the argot of the poilus. Read, or try 
to read Rene Benjamin's much discussed 
"Gaspard," or "Le Feu" by Henri Bar- 
busse, which received the Prix Goncourt. A 
French officer who crossed on the Chicago 
laughingly acknowledged that there were 
times when he was hard put to it to compre- 
hend. It was not argot that was used as a 
cypher in one instance, according to the tale 
of the genial LeDantec, prince of transatlan- 
tic commissaires and good fellows. Nearing 
the danger zone, one of the French liners was 
hailed by a vessel claiming to belong to the 
same line. "We want to know your exact 
whereabouts," was the sense of the message. 
But these are days when ships are sus- 
picious of cajoling words plucked out of the 
air, and steam away under full power from 
S. O. S. calls. Finally the reply with the 
desired information was sent. But as a pre- 
caution it was worded in Breton. Now ten 
203 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

thousand Germans understand French to 
one who has the slightest knowledge of 
Breton, but there is not a real French ship 
on the sea without some one on board who 
calls the ancient language his own. 

There was no spy mania on board the 
Chicago, The French officials at Bordeaux 
>vere taking no chances. Their work had 
been thoroughly done. But from the point 
of view of people who think of transatlantic! 
travel as it was before August, 1914, we 
were a strange ship's company, far stranger 
than the one on the Nieuw Amsterdam, 
First there were the returning American 
Ambulance drivers, a service that had appar- 
ently been recruited from all classes and con- 
ditions. Two of them enlivened the first 
evening by a sanguinary mix up all over 
the smoking room. The row had been com- 
ing for some time, the other ambulanciers 
explained. There had been bad blood be- 
204 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

tween the two back in Paris. Stretching 
his uniform at all points almost to bursting 
was Nicolini — that is not his name — with 
his great laugh and his dreadful grammar, 
"Read 'em and weep, boys," was his invari- 
able admonition as he dealt the cards in the 
poker game. Then his deep voice raised in 
unmelodious song, shook the ceiling of the 
smoking room. "Oh, some girls will and 
some girls won't: some girls do and some 
girls don't." It ended there. That was as 
much as he knew. But the constant repe- 
tition became the ship's tragedy. From 
the poker game player after player drifted 
away. Finally even "Nic" joined the de- 
serters. "What do you think?" he confided 
in a hoarse whisper. "There's a man cheat- 
ing in that game. Cheating in a franc 
limit'' Over and over he kept emphasizing 
that phase of the crime. "A franc limit ! Did 
you ever hear the like?" "Some night," said 
205 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

D. J. to me, "you will be coming out of the 
Hotel Knickerbocker, and a familiar voice 
will greet you with *Taxi? Taxi?' and you 
will look up and see Nic." The remark 
was in no spirit of detraction. It simply 
meant that it would not be surprising to 
i5nd the genial soldier of fortune in any avo- 
cation or orbit. 

The ambulance driver with the Buffalo ad- 
dress" had announced himself before we 
sailed. Perhaps with the idea of comforting 
the few women passengers he had loudly 
proclaimed that the U boats were after the 
Chicago this trip and were going to get her, 
sure. He knew, because he had inside in- 
formation. "We military men have our re- 
sponsibilities," he told Percy reassuringly. 
"If anything happens I will keep an eye on 
you." This to Percy, who was sheer grit, 
who once went, single handed, into a mob 
of lynchers, and took out his man. (Percy 
206 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

does not know that I know that, and, I fear, 
will not like my telling it.) We could not 
place the man until we realized that he was 
in a state bordering almost on panic. Oc- 
casionally, in the day time, he slept. But 
between the mouth of the Gironde and the 
Narrows he never took off more than his 
leather puttees. Night after night he paced 
the wind swept, spray wet deck. In his 
talk he was neither tactful nor modest. 
Consequently advantage was taken of his 
apprehensions and credulity. The list of 
the ship and what it might portend were 
gravely discussed in his presence. Silence 
was demanded in order that the working 
pumps below might be more distinctly heard. 
Certain riotous spirits of the smoking room 
donned the life belts and insisted on patrol- 
ling the deck in his company. 

The Chicago was bringing back to the 
United States the officers and crews of three 
207 



BOTTLED UP IN BELGIUM 

^American merchantmen that had been tor- 
pedoed, two in the Mediterranean, and one 
in the Bay of Biscay. It was the same story 
that all the survivors told ; the pitiless firing 
on the crews after they had taken to the 
boats. The skipper of one of the destroyed 
vessels was a Swede. But his wife was as 
Irish as the lovely River Shannon. Her 
narrative was rich with descriptive quality 
and invective. "The diwils ! Niver will I 
touch hands again with one of them as long 
as I live. My husband sez to me, *Aggie, 
stand up! Maybe when they see ye they'll 
stop firing!' Stop firing, is it? The next 
shot shook all the hairpins out of me head!" 
The trivial tale draws to a close. The 
ropes were cast off, and the Chicago steamed 
down the widening river on its way to the 
Bay of Biscay. A few hours before our 
departure the RocJiamheau had arrived from 
N^ York. The incoming passengers told 
208 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

of the submarine that had been encountered 
forty miles from the mouth of the Gironde, 
of the quick turn of the steamship's wheel, 
of the torpedo that had missed by twenty 
yards, and the stern chase almost to the 
French coast. But there was fight, there 
was the menace of swift destruction, in the 
gleam of the long "Seventy-five" at the 
stern, the short "Seventy-five" at the bow. 
Clustered about each were blue jacketed 
gunners from the French Navy. The cylin- 
drical shells were being passed up to the 
gun decks. Somehow the sight of the 
swinging barrels, and the lithe figures of 
the men, brought a sense of reassurance. 

There came to mind the story of the man, 
who, on the eve of a duel, was informed that 
his opponent of the dawn was a famous 
marksman, who could shatter a wine glass at 
thirty paces. "But," he said, "the wine 
glass does not hold a pistol." The broad- 
209 



BOTTLED IIP m BELGIUM 

side of the Lusitania, steaming unsuspect- 
ingly into the Irish Sea, had been the wine 
glass unarmed. There was nothing to 
hurry the cruel aim, to jump the nerves that 
had governed the guiding eyes and hands. 
The Chicago was the wine glass with finger 
on the trigger. Nor were the guarding 
guns all. There was no chance of the name- 
less terror. Come what might we were to 
be given a chance. The life boats were 
swung far out, ready to be dropped to the 
water. Every one knew his boat and his 
place in it, and the nature of the signal that 
was to govern his actions. The first two 
nights on deck, near your boat, fully dressed, 
and with life belt at hand, were the instruc- 
tions as the vessel neared the danger zone. 
The third day a man in naval uniform, with 
black circles about his eyes, appeared in the 
dining saloon. It was the Commandant, 
for the first time leaving the bridge. The 
^10 



GETTING OUT OF THE BOTTLE 

U-boat infested waters were behind us. 
We were in the open sea. Across it we 
came back to an America that I had never 
seen before, and, once this grim job is done 
and thoroughly done, may I never see again. 



THE END 



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